millenials

This blog is drawn from some writing I have in the mix for an upcoming article and was also prompted by a Future Majority post this past week titled Consensus, Millennial Politics, and the Common Good.

Bergerc84 kicked things off with the following line:

Peter Levine blogged about consensus today, and it got me thinking about Millennials, their affinity for collaboration, and how this impacts the current political environment.

His thoughts became my muse as well. Will a new generation that is prone to collaboration bring an end to decades of hostile culture wars, bitter partisanship, and relentless political gridlock? Will we too spend the vast majority of our political energy engaging in back-and-forth diatribes over the hot-button issues of abortion, gay marriage, gun control, and global warming? Or will our generation finally rise above, forge a working consensus, and move our nation forward?

Crossposted at Young Philly Politics

A couple of months back I mentioned that I had proposed and accepted a job doing political outreach and organizing with Philadelphians Against Santorum (PAS). Since then I have been completely overwhelmed with the work at hand and a big move back to Philly (I lived in Brooklyn for the past 8 years with my wife), so I wasn't able to write as much as I would have liked to (and lord knows I love to self-promote!). But now that things have come to an end (and what a sweet, sweet ending it was!) I wanted to tell you a bit about the program I ran through PAS, and give you some of my thoughts and experiences from this election cycle. Since I am still working to get my life back to a sense of normality, I still don't have a ton of time, so I am going to keep this post short, and expand on it over the next few days.

How it all started...
This past summer I worked for the amazing documentary The War Tapes, doing outreach to the netroots, web support, and bit of event planning. As the theatrical release was coming to an end, sometime late in the summer, I looked around at the lack of political groups working in Philly and I started to get really nervous that the left was once again poised to snatch defeat from the arms of victory. I only knew of one group- Philadelphians Against Santorum- that was doing any sort of field work in the city, and as far as I could tell there weren't any groups at all doing youth outreach, which really shocked me given the fact that Kerry owed his victory in PA during the 2004 Presidential Elections to the 2-1 advantage he received from people under 25 (every age group over 25 voted for Bush by a small margin). At around the same time I noticed that PAS was hiring for field organizers, and I shot PAS founder/Director Ray Murphy an e-mail to tell him that I was interested in working with/for them.

A week later I met with Ray and PAS' Assistant Director Jen Murphy (not related to each other or to Congressional candidate Lois or Congressional-elect Patrick) and listened to what they were trying to accomplish and how they thought that they could do so. Basically, Ray's plan was to knock on the doors of new and infrequent voters, call them on the phone, and make sure that they got their asses to the polls on election day (I'll let Ray explain it better, or check out some of the great press pieces that PAS received). The plan sounded good, but I knew where I could have the most effect, both in terms of this election and for builaing the Future Majority that we will need to fix the multitude of problems our generation faces (or will face in the near future) and it wasn't on some stranger's doorstep. What I proposed to Ray was to implement the political side of a project that I have been working on for over a year now (and which I continue to try and make into a reality), which is an adaptation of the model that Music for America uses to bring young people (like yours truly) into the network enabled left-leaning movement. Basically, I proposed that I work at every concert thrown by Philly's independent show promotion king-- Sean Agnew and his company R5 Productions-- as well as on campus, to register as many millenials as possible and persuade them to vote and vote Democratic through face-to-face encounters in spaces where they feel comfortable and at home.

Youth Outreach & Building a Future Majority
I could write an entire Masters Thesis on why focusing on young voters is paramount to any movement that strives for long-term success, why face-to-face interactions with a peer are extremely important to accomplish this, and why the connections between culture and politics need to be pointed out to young people, but as I said, I'm a bit short of time at the moment. Okay, that's a bit of a bad joke (if it wasn't for bad jokes, I wouldn't be able to tell any at all). I wrote my Master's Thesis on this exact subject (titled Keys to a Future Majority), which you can find here on Future Majority. Here are a few of the relevant sections that led me to believe that youth outreach was the most important activity that progressives could engage in:

I've had time to sift through what data is available, and just got off the media call held by Young Voter Strategies and CIRCLE. The bottom line is this - youth turnout increased yet again and millenials chose democrats over Republicans by 22 percentage points (60%-38%).

In Montana, where Jon Tester beat out Conrad Burns, I'm hearing that young voters made up 17% of the electorate and that their swing towards Democrats may have been the deciding factor in Tester's election.

If this is a wave election, that wave is being fueled by young voters and their growing allegiance to progressive politics.

Here's what we know so far based on exit polls, preliminary precinct reporting, and census data from March 2006:

Here's some preliminary info from CNN:

COMBINED CONGRESSIONAL BALLOT VOTE BY AGE
TOTAL Democrat Republican
18-29 (13%) 60% 38%
30-44 (24%) 53% 45%
45-59 (34%) 53% 45%
60+ (29%) 51% 47%

Ignore the 13% number. That is not a good indicator of overall turnout numbers. But check out that 60%! Millenials voted Democrat by 22% - more than double the advantage that they gave Kerry in 2004.

And yet again, we turned out to be more Democratic than any other generation. The Progressive Wave is coming, and its all about us Millenials.

YVS is releasing hard turnout numbers later today. I'll have a fuller post then.

Rather than post continuously as more exit polls are released and analyzed, I'm going to use this post to write rolling updates on new data. I'll write/post something comprehensive after the Young Voter Strategy media call tomorrow afternoon.

Update - 9:15 YVS is going to release more updates from exit polls at university precincts, but won't have any hard turnout numbers until tomorrow morning. So I'm taking the rest of the night to nurse my head cold. I'll be back tomorrow. Maybe I'll post again tonight if something really interesting rears its head.

Update - 7:15pm: YVS reports that their campus exit polls continue to show that turnout at Ohio State University and UW-Madison are surpassing 2002 levels.

I wish they had turnout numbers from non-university precincts too. I'm going to hunt around for some. Let me know if you find any.

6:15pm Young Voter Strategies just released their first projection of youth turnout, and it looks like turnout is up on campuses in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Maryland.

That's good news for Democratic Gubernatorial and Senate candidates like Sherrod Brown, Ben Cardin, Jennifer Granholm, Mike Hatch and Martin O'Malley.

Early numbers show significantly higher young voter turnout in a number of student-dense precincts; in fact, in four youth-dense precincts in Maryland, Michigan, and Ohio, student turnout at 2pm was already higher than the final vote count in that same precinct in 2002. Click here for the spreadsheet.

And in six of the University Wisconsin-Madison precincts (where tallies are reported by the hour), turnout at 11am was two to three times higher this year than at 11am in 2002. See chart below, and a news release from the PIRGs’ New Voters Project with more information and info on activities happening around the country. We’ll be gathering more precinct tallies and have additional information later in the evening.

Couple small things.

First, I had time to look more closely at the Harvard IOP Poll. There was one more interesting finding that I didn't report on in my previous post:

• Young voters are extremely distrustful of the media, Congress, and the President. When it comes to institutions, Millenials place the most trust in the UN, the Supreme Court, and most of all, the military.

Combine that with the plurality of young voters (46%) who favor withdrawal from Iraq in the next year, and it seems that NeoCon foreign policy isn't going to fly with our generation for much longer. It also suggests that Millenials have less of a hard time than their parents (ironically) understanding that supporting the troops but not the war or the President aren't contradictions in terms.

Second, Josh sent me this great graphic illustrating generational political beliefs. It's pretty impressive seeing Generational shifts playout like this.

Typically, popular Presidents increase their party's lead among voters who come of age during their terms. In the case of Bush II (formerly "one of the most popular presidents"), it seems that Bush is so reviled among young people that he is actually working against his party and increasing the party identification lead that started under Clinton.

Mystery Pollster notes that these results are somewhat fleeting - people are bound to change their answers over time and/or depending on how the question is worded. Yet other studies show that we form our political opinions during our 20s. If that remains true, we may be witnessing the growth of the most democratically aligned generation in a century.

Click to view a larger image.

Ivan Frishberg responded to my post over at Daily Kos and he nailed why this is important:

this is a HUGE opportunity for Democrats. Campaigns have never engaged the broader population of young people in their campaigns (the exact types of folks you are talking about).

Campaigns that reach out to them can bring critical new voters to the polls.

This is like the generational version of the 50 state strategy and anyone who is all hyped up about that and dismissing the youth vote just doesn't get it.

Just focussing on the 50% of the population that is MOST likey to vote ignores all the votes you can get, ignores the long term opportunities / consequences of abandoning half the population, and is not building the kind of democracy we need for the long run.

Bingo.

Hat tip to Fred for putting me on to this.

As I type this, the Harvard Institute of Politics is releasing the results of a new poll that will predict a record-shattering turnout on behalf of young voters in next week's midterm elections.

The news looks great for Democrats, and great for the youth vote - which will receive added attention from politicians and perhaps put to rest the "apathetic youth" meme if these numbers bear out.

Right now only the press release (pdf) is available, but here are the major points that HIP will report:

Turnout

• Almost 32% of 18-24 year olds report tat they will "definitely be voting" on November 7th. Previous turnout records for midterm elections stands at 26.6% in 1982.

Partisan Views

• 68% of young voters disaprove of the job that the President is doing.
• 52% would prefer that Democrats control congress vs. 29% who prefer Republicans. 19% see no difference.
• 60% believe the country is on the wrong track.
• 46% favor withdrawal from Iraq within the next year.

Faith in the System

• 75% believe that elected officials don't share their priorities.

Perhaps putting to rest the old saw that young people are apathetic because they don't see politics as relevant to their lives:

• 70% of 18-24 year olds believe that politics is relevant to their lives

The study also continues to confirm the growing trend of civic participation among millenial voters, noting that 58% of 18-24 year olds volunteer in their communities at least once a month.

The catch - only 19% have participated in a government, political, or issue-related organization in that same time period.

Preliminary Conclusions
The news is really, really good. The survey sample for this poll is huge - 2,546 respondents half of whom have attended or will attend college and half who have not. Harvard estimates the margin of error for these stats to be +/- 3%.

I'm a little reluctant to ramp up expectations. High expectations are what caused the anti-youth backlash in November and December 2004 when Kerry lost. Yet Democrats are poised to take back at least one chamber of Congress this election cycle, and many state legislatures. It looks like that victory may in part be due to young voters maintaining their high turnout from the last Presidential cycle. Certainly all the indicators point that way, and if it happens I hope that the media will give young people due credit.

Now we've just got to figure out a way to get millenials to volunteer for explicitly political organizations at the same rate that they volunteer in their communities. That would be the beginning of an unstoppable future majority for progressives.

Update: The Executive Summary (pdf) and topline data (pdf) are now online. I know what I'm doing tonight.

Update II: Typically, I got some pushback on this post from a commenter on Daily Kos. It's a rough scene over there for young voters sometimes. In response, I'm asking folks to recommend my Diary (to try to get it in front of the community and provoke a conversation), and to list, in the comments, any piece of progressive infrastructure (Blog, PAC, Org, etc.) created or run by "Millenials" (aka folks under 30).

I've finally finished Applebee's America (damn is it hard to find time to read these days). The book doesn't have much new to say, at least not if you've been paying attention to political/business strategy discussions or have spent any time reading about the GOP 2004 GOTV strategy.

In a nutshell - "Gut Values" connections, not policy proposals, are what win voters; people group by lifestyle affinities not ideology; and word of mouth trumps broadcast advertising. Essentially the book is a strategy memo about framing and community-building told in the language of cutting-edge corporate marketing.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then I suggest reading it. If my last paragraph sounded very familiar, you can probably pass on this book. There are some good case studies, and a few rudimentary how-tos, but mostly the book builds an argument in favor of life targeting as a tactic. By far the freshest piece of information, to me, was the description of mega churches. Sosnik, Dowd and Fournier tell a good tale about the rise and practices of mega-churches, and their descriptions definitely broke down some stereotypes I was holding onto.

Also interesting to me was the discussion of Millenials - or what the authors label "Generation 9/11." Find out why after the jump.

As we move past the midterm elections and start to focus on the Democratic Primaries, I'd like to start injecting some policy discussions into this blog.

This November, I think that young voters will vote on two issues: the war and GOP corruption/deception. It's not at all clear to me that this will continue to be the case two years from now. If Democrats take congress, they are going to need an affirmative vision for moving America forward - one that speaks to our hopes and aspirations.

So what does that look like in the context of Millenial voters?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I think that means having an honest conversation about affordable college education and what rising debt levels mean for students working hard to pursue the American Dream.

On that note, check this out:

More after the jump.