Campaigns

We have discussed the short shrift Millennials get in traditional polling operations due to their cell phone-only tendencies, but here is a CDC report that underscores it:

In a first for any age group, more than half of Americans age 25-29 live in households with cell phones but no traditional landline telephones.

A report on phone use by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also found that the younger children are, the likelier they are to live in homes that only have wireless phones. That suggests that younger parents are showing increasing comfort relying only on cell phones even as they adjust from being single to a more settled family lifestyle, according to one of the report's authors.

Of course, given Millennials' Democratic tendencies, failing to take them into account in campaign polling operations leads to an increasing GOP bias, as this Daily Kos diary discussed in October.

Some other data from the study, conducted by CDC's National
Center for Health Statistics:

• The households likeliest to rely only on wireless phones consist of adults who are poor, renters, Hispanics or who live with unrelated housemates.
• Only 13 percent of households have landlines and no cell phones — down from 24 percent in early 2007.
• Though people age 18-29 are the heaviest cell phone users, they comprise only 40 percent of all wireless-only adults. That's because young adults make up only about one-fifth of the total adult population.
• Only 16 percent of Northeasterners live in cell phone-only homes, the lowest of any region. The highest frequency of wireless-only households is in the South, where 29 percent live that way.
• About 2 percent of households have no phone service at all, a figure that has changed little in recent years.

As we move forward toward the 2012 race, I suspect we'll be seeing even larger numbers of Millennial cell phone-only households.

Matt Bai's piece in the New York Times Magazine chronicles the emerging tensions between the White House and the Congress as they strategize for the 2010 mid-terms. Within the piece, Bai discusses the generational dynamic at play as the DNC (what is now the Obama-backed OFA) is pushing congressional candidates (against their wills) to make their pitches to voters normally perceived as unreliable.

...The lesson that Plouffe and his operation took away from the dismal 2009 elections is that Obama can act like a matchmaker of sorts, introducing the party’s candidates to new voters and vouching for their intentions, but it’s only going to matter if the candidates themselves embrace the so-called new politics. What that means, practically speaking, is that the White House is urging candidates to divert a fair amount of their time and money — traditionally used for buying TV ads and rallying core constituencies — to courting volunteers and voters who haven’t generally been reliable Democrats.

This is not what members of Congress or their campaign managers are trained to do, and it has created something of a cultural chasm between the White House and the party apparatus. There is a strong generational component here. With some exceptions, Obama’s passion for organizing finds more enthusiasm among candidates closer to the president’s age and newer to politics (candidates like Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado), while older Democrats have a harder time imagining that a bunch of volunteers and a dozen virtual town-hall meetings are going to matter more than labor endorsements and some killer 30-second spots...

[...]

By Democratic Party standards, this is a relatively muted internal disagreement. But it nonetheless points to the emergence of rival schools of thought within the party when it comes to Obama’s importance as a party leader. Some see him as having transformed both the electorate and the nature of campaigning in what could be a lasting and fundamental way, meaning that things are possible now — both in terms of liberal governance and winning elections — that did not seem possible before. Others view 2008 mostly as a cathartic election that had more to do with conditions in the country than with Obama’s peculiar magic, and they don’t think the party should assume that there are millions of new voters out there who can be tapped if you just knock on the right doors. These two worldviews coexist uneasily among the party’s elected officials and candidates, young and old, in every part of the country — sometimes just hours apart.

The congressional camp within the Democratic Party reflects the status quo that continues to claim that new voters -- including young voters -- don't vote and are apathetic. What they refuse to understand is that we are civically active; we do vote when we are genuinely engaged in a conversation about issues through a medium relevant to our lifestyles. These labor endorsements and "killer" television ads are almost as boring as network news these days. Instead, we should be investing in the peer-to-peer voting drives and organizing work that have already increased the youth vote for three straight elections. From Mike Connery's Journalist Cheat Sheet:

Tip #5: If you insist on reporting the same old story that young people vote at a lower rate than the rest of the electorate, then you have an obligation to also inform your readers/viewers/listeners that youth turnout has increased for 3 years straight, and is at its highest level in over a decade. You also have an obligation to note that in 2006 the youth vote swung a number of important federal races, including pushing Democratic candidates Jon Tester, Jim Webb, and Joe Courtney over the top.

Source: Historical voting patterns (pdf), Impact on Races (pdf), Midterm Turnout (pdf).

Tip #6: If you are going to report on low-turnout among young voters, you also have an obligation to note that young people face more barriers to voting than do older voters. We move more frequently, requiring us to re-register sometimes on a yearly basis, on campus we face a lack of voting machines and long lines, and many university towns actively discourage and try to prevent students from voting.

Source: League of Conservation Voters Education Fund

Tip #7: There are simple fixes to the problems outlined in #6 – election day and same-day registration and mail-in voting are two such fixes that can be applied at the state level. These have been proven to bump youth turnout by as much as 14%!!!!! It would be nice if you reported on them occasionally.

Source: CIRCLE

Tip #8: Young voters will participate if they are asked to, particularly by a peer. This is proven. But the system stopped asking long ago by removing resources and manpower away from young voter outreach. Only in recent years have organizations – and a few campaigns – begin to reengage young voters in any serious way. The result is three straight years in which youth turnout increased. In plain terms: young voters are not apathetic. Rather, the system fails to engage them in any meaningful way.

Source: Young Voter Strategies, Voter Mobilization Tactics

Tip #9: Stop reporting on “celebrity activism” as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the youth vote. This is a Boomer and Gen-X construction created for a broadcast TV culture of the 80s and 90s. Today’s young voters are interested in peer-to-peer communication and networked action. From Facebook to on the ground, peer to peer organizing at club, bars, barbershops and apartment canvassing, the most effective, and sustainable developments in youth organizing in the past five years have come from new, grassroots organizations doing peer to peer organizing on the ground or online. Stop reporting on celebrities and start doing the work of talking to and reporting on the activities of these organizations. Good places to start include:

Forward Montana, The Oregon Bus Project, New Era Colorado, Young Democrats of America, and The League of Young Voters.

There are many more, but let’s do this in baby steps. Start with these and we’ll work out way deeper into youth organizing together.

Young voters can be courted; it just takes some courage and genuine effort. The Speaker's office and legislators like Congressman George Miller (D-CA) have been great on youth policy issues, but in purely electoral terms, the Congressional campaign plan outlined above is disappointing. While OFA doesn't have a pristine record with young voters, they apparently get it more than many of the old guard congressmen and congresswomen.

UPDATE: An example of Congress not understanding youth priorities or youth culture today? Ike Skelton, a longtime Democratic congressman, provides one:

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday that he thought the military should keep its ban on openly gay service members in part because he did not want to open a national discussion about homosexuality. The chairman, Representative Ike Skelton, a conservative Missouri Democrat, said he thought the debate in Congress over the proposed repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy might force families to explain homosexuality to their children. “What do mommies and daddies say to their 7-year-old child?” Mr. Skelton asked reporters at a news media breakfast.

Campus Progress is planning an upcoming campaign training event, How to Win in 2010: Mobilizing Young Voters, taking place on June 21st at the Center for American Progress. This nonpartisan day of trainings, which is being co-sponsored by , the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management, and the American University Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, will focus on equipping campaign staff, candidates and members of the media with tools to help them effectively engage, utilize, and turn out young voters. Campus Progress has a number of great speakers lined up so far, including Steve Hildebrand (former Obama for America Deputy Campaign Manager), Karen Hicks, and trainers from Rock the Vote, PEW, the Fair Elections Legal Network, and many other organizations.

The training day is free, and limited travel and housing scholarships are also available. You can find more information and register on the Campus Progress website: www.campusprogress.org/WinIn2010.
If you have any questions, you can email Katie Andriulli at kandriulli at americanprogress dot org.

A new report out of Southern Illinois University, delivered at the Harvard Political Networks Conference, attempts to quantify the use and effectiveness of Facebook support pages in the 2008 House elections: Explaining Facebook Support in the Congressional Election Cycle.

The report is a useful, if incomplete look at the factors behind congressional campaign support on Facebook during the 2008 cycle. It looks primarily at the advantages/disadvantages of money, incumbancy and district demographics. Where it fails short (and the authors readily admit there is much more research to be done on this issue) is in how campaigns actually used Facebook to organize - via the "Events" function, cleaning up young voter lists, etc. The effectiveness of those types of activities strikes me as much more useful data for campaigns staffers looking ahead to 2010.

That said, here's a look at some of their findings:

• "Only 8% of Americans reported using social networks to learn about campaigns during the 2008 election cycle."
• "The Facebook community is skewed in favor of college educated, more affluent, white, urban and younger citizens. The closer a congressional district resembles this profile, the larger the pool is from which to draw potential Facebook supporters."
• The candidate with the most Facebook supporters tends to win the election, but this does not mean Facebook support is predictive. The community is too demographically skewed for this to be considered an accurate measure.
• 79% of Democratic House Candidates had a Facebook Supporter page in 2008, compared to just 66% of Republican House Candidates.
• Facebook was decidedly NOT a tool of insurgents in 2008. "Fully 93.2% of incumbents had Politicians’ Pages, while only 70.8% of candidates for open seats did so, and the percentage for challengers drops to 48.9%."
• Incumbency and money (more media exposure) were factors in the number of supporters a candidate had on Facebook. Incumbents typically had over 165 more supporters than challengers.
• On average, Democratic candidates had 120 more supporters than Republicans.
• More college educated voters in a district tend to increase the number of Facebook supporters in a race, while a greater percentage of young people generally decreases the number of Facebook supporters for incumbents. (To be perfectly honest, this is SUPER counterintuitive and the authors do a terrible job of explaining what this means or how they come to this conclusion.)
• More activity on the page (from the candidate or from supporters) tends to increase the number of total supporters. Wall posts and videos are the most effective forms of activity for expanding a support base. Fan photos had little effect in growing a support base.
• The average congressional campaign grew its FaceBook fanbase at a rate of 4 - 6% per month.

A good mix today -- some technology, service, and policy for you. Enjoy!

• Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco, uses technology to announce his campaign for California's governorship, with his campaign focusing on generational change as a message.
• Steve Schmidt and David Plouffe took the time to sit down and talk about the 2008 election at the University of Delaware Thursday night. Plouffe talked about the importance of young voters to the campaign and the point in time when the Obama campaign sensed the momentum changing.
• Youth Service America's Global Youth and Service Day events are being held this weekend. From a press release: "During GYSD, the largest service event in the world and an initiative of Youth Service America (YSA), young people will participate in and facilitate projects with families, schools, community and faith-based organizations, and businesses; they focus on serious issues such as climate change, education, poverty, health, hunger and homelessness." Over 1,800 projects were planned around the world for this event -- double the number of projects held last year.
• techPresident covers the signing of the Serve America Act, specifically the development of serve.gov, a Web 2.0 clearinghouse for service opportunities run by the government.
• Google and Personal Democracy Forum are launching a fellowship program for those interested in developing new ways of using technology to make change and influence government and policy:
  

  Google and Personal Democracy Forum are teaming up to offer registration fellowships that cover the full forum registration costs and a meal with Googlers for twenty well-qualified, creative political entrepreneurs to attend this year's conference on June 29-30 at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City.

  Fellows will be chosen based on evidence of how you've turned ideas into action and into new applications of technology in the political or civic arena.

  Go to the link and apply by May 8th if interested.

• The House Financial Services Committee passed the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights (H.R. 627) on Wednesday. The House passed similar legislation last year, but it stalled in the Senate.
• Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) is a bit upset that he won't be able to reap the benefits of serving as a hero to the private student loan industry. Obama and the House and Senate negotiators in the budget process have agreed to use budget reconciliation for student lending legislation, effectively diminishing Nelson's influence. Ezra Klein reports.
• Speaking of Ezra Klein, someone got a new gig at the Washington Post. Klein's post on this can be found here. Klein starts May 18.
• An alternative view of Ashton Kutcher's Twitter quest at AdAge.

Update: AdamGreen of the PCCC offers an explanation of the organization over at Open Left.

----------------------------------------------------------

A group of former MoveOn.org and labor organizers is rolling out a new cog in progressive infrastructure -- the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

The Huffington Post posted this story, which Chris Bowers picked up at Open Left on Thursday:

Rather than focusing on large, independent expenditures, ala the Club for Growth, it seeks to help progressive federal candidates, such as Tom Geoghegan, by providing them with expert staff, advice, strategy and connection to the netroots. The focus will be on open seat primaries, and progressives who face competitive general elections, but primaries against conservative Democrats might also come into play. From a Huffington Post story today:

A group of progressive operatives from MoveOn and labor circles have teamed with a prominent Internet pioneer to try to give the Sam Bennetts of the world the final push they need -- and send even more Perriellos to Congress. The organization will be the first of its kind exclusively to focus on electing progressive Democrats in congressional elections.
It won't focus its energy on unseating conservative Democrats, but Green, a cofounder, didn't rule out the possibility. Instead, it will prioritize competitive open-seat primaries and help general election candidates like Bennett and Perriello run effective campaigns.

The group's first forays are likely to be in the Illinois district vacated by Rahm Emanuel, who left to become Obama's chief of staff. Green says the group is in talks with a progressive labor lawyer, Tom Geoghegan, in that district. Another potential target: the California district emptied by Hilda Solis, who's been tapped to be labor secretary.(...)

The PCCC aims to be something of a guiding resource for first-time candidates like Bennett. By helping candidates find good campaign staff and make more effective use of the Internet, the group thinks candidates could save tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in consultant fees. Whereas consultants might charge thousands to record and pump out robo-calls, for instance, the PCCC could show a candidate how to do it in-house, online, for a fraction of the cost.

The PCCC suddenly makes the process of running for office seem much less intimidating for an electoral novice -- a very good thing for many of our potential young elected officials. This organization appears strong, as Bowers notes that it's on track to raise $650,000 this year already. It's also very experienced, thanks to the cadre of former MoveOn.org and labor activists guiding it. For youth toying around with running for office, this is a great tool.

Should this create the positive momentum in attracting young candidates like I think it might, perhaps we can start to fix this problem.

So... the sad part of this is that my dyslectic tendencies made me transverse the dates for the film fest contest, so rather than submitting my video by the 12th I thought it was the 21st. So even though I was early... I was late....

That said, the importance of journalists correctly covering the youth movement this election is essential - 100% essential and those who flub the facts I know frustrate me to no end.

Thus, here is my wrap-up version of this election according to youth

I'm mostly still off the grid but had to pop back in to share this with you. Vote Vets just announced the launch of an Emerging Leaders program to help (mostly) young veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan get elected to state and local office in a bid to build the Democratic foreign policy bench. Add this to the growing roster of organizations that help train new, young candidates for public office.

Here's what they had to say:

[W]e learned very quickly that the key to building a long-term, progressive cadre of national leaders with on-the-ground foreign policy experience is to have a "deep bench" as they say in sports. In order to win House and Senate seats for years to come, we have to be able to put up candidates that have years of political experience under their belts. And as we've seen over the past two, just being an Iraq vet doesn't cut it in the hyper-competitive world of Washington politics.

That's why we've devised a "farm team" of progressive candidates with hands-on national security experience. We've created a program for like-minded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans called Emerging Leaders. In this program, we recruit vets with little to no political experience and promote them in state and local races. We've also incorporated a number of Iraq and Afghanistan who have already won state and local races in the past few years. The idea is to develop seasoned leaders who are more than capable of not only running for federal office in the coming years (should they choose to), but of winning. By cultivating their political careers at the earliest stages, we'll help them to become U.S. senators and members of Congress down the road.

These veterans will eventually become the answer to the McCains, Grahams, and Liebermans of the world when it comes to the question of whether or not to start a war.

Here's the inaugural class:

New Candidates

• Stephen Webber: Iraq Vet - Running for Missouri State House
• Jason Kander: Afghanistan Vet - Running for Missouri State House
• Miranda Norman: Iraq Vet - Running for Oklahoma State House
• Richard Riggs: Iraq Vet - Running for Oregon State House
• Donald Bortz: Iraq Vet - Running for Oakland County (Michigan) Commissioner
• Alex Cornell du Houx: Iraq Vet - Running for Maine State House
• Glenn Ray: Iraq Vet - Running for Arizona State House
• Allan Branstiter: Iraq Vet - Running for North Dakota State Senate

Elected Officials

• Harold Naughton: Iraq Vet - Running for re-election to the Massachusetts State House
• Joe Rice: Iraq Vet - Running for re-election to the Colorado State House
• Allen Vaught: Iraq Vet - Running for re-election to the Texas State House
• McKinley Bailey: Iraq and Afghanistan Vet - Running for re-election to the Iowa State House
• Steven Fulop: Iraq Vet - Jersey City, New Jersey City Councilman
• Steve Hobbs: Iraq Vet, Washington State Senator

In conversation, the President of one of YDA's state chapters raised a really interesting question: What would happen if campaigns stopped putting money into the senior vote and redirected that to youth?

It's a provocative question. Campaigns tend to spend no money on young people "because youth don't vote," and they expend a large share of resources reaching out to the "reliable" senior vote. When you think about it, it's a little ass-backwards. Voting is a habit and seniors tend to be full-on addicts in their turnout rates. If we stopped spending money reaching out to them and encouraging them to get to the polls, would they turnout anyway? Probably. It seems highly unlikely they would quite voting cold turkey. Couldn't that money be better spent reaching out to people whose voting habits are not so "reliable" and whose partisanship is still up for grabs?

It's not an all or nothing proposition. You don't need to stop spending ALL money on seniors, but perhaps adjusting the proportion spent on seniors and that spent on young people might yield better returns on investment overall? What would happen if half the money spent robo-calling, direct mailing, and door-knocking seniors went to contacting young people?

Conversely, if we did see a big drop-off in senior turnout under such a campaign, doesn't that speak to the importance of doing outreach to ALL demographics? If less resources and contacts means a smaller senior vote, the same is true of young voters. You can't claim they're unreliable and not worth resources if the very act of withholding resources is what drives down their turnout numbers . . .

It would be interesting to run this as a field experiment in a super-safe Democratic seat. I don't think we will, but it would be a good piece of data to have.

And so it begins, a summer of articles about campaign interns and graduates hopping on the campaign trail. Welcome to the summer youth vote narrative.