CNN

Here's a shocker - more young viewers watched new CNN show with Erin Burnett than watched Chris Matthews. To be fair... did Chris Matthews ever have a youth following? Last night she even reported on Occupy Wall Street with sunglasses on!

Her new CNN show OutFront show drew 535k in total viewers, which is up 11% from what John King USA averaged in that time slot last month.

More importantly, at least in TV land, she attracted 215,000 viewers in the key 25-54 demo which is up a whopping 48% from what the 7pm slow was averaging in September.

To put that in context, Burnett topped Chris Matthew's Hardball in the key demo by 14%.

Crossposted from OurTime.Org

Mark Blumenthal has a piece up at the Huffington Post about our campaign against what we called the Bad CNN Polls.

After explaining the situation and the campaign Our Time launched to hold CNN accountable, he said this whole debacle comes down to two questions.

First, why are CNN's pollsters having so much trouble reaching younger Americans? Second, does it matter that CNN's landline sample misses so many younger Americans that it has to weight the youngest age group up by a factor of at least three?

The answer to the first question is easy: CNN's unweighted poll was light on younger Americans because their sample covered only households with a landline telephone. As documented by the National Center for Health Statistics, the percentage of American households with a cellphone but no landline telephone service has been steadily rising over the last ten years, especially among younger Americans. As of last year, 24.9 percent of all adults have wireless service only, but among those aged 25 to 29 years that number is now more than half -- 51.3 percent. . .

The second question -- can CNN factor in its lack of young adults? -- is tougher. The answer, according to the available data, is that demographic weighting alone does not entirely make up for its missing cellphone-only respondents.

The best support for this conclusion comes from a series of studies involving parallel surveys using dual samples of both landline and mobile phones. Pew Research, which conducted the surveys, has produced a series of reports since 2007 comparing the weighted results obtained by combining landline and mobile phone samples with those obtained from landline calling only."

There's a whole lot more to read over at HuffPo - check it out and sign the petition to hold CNN accountable!

Earlier today, Julie Blitzer of the Manhattan Young Democrats and the New Yorkers for Equality campaign appeared on CNN's Blogger Bunch. Here's the video:

Julie also writes in to note that earlier today, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn hand delivered 1,500 letters from constituents to state senators urging them to support marriage equality in New York. From the MYD press release:

On an historic day for Californians where the state Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8 to ban marriage equality, New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn has teamed up with Manhattan Young Democrats (MYD) and its partners to ensure that New Yorkers are not held to the same fate. Quinn was in New York’s capital today hand delivering thousands of letters including nearly 1,500 letters that have been written through newyorkequality.com, a website that was launched last week to connect New Yorkers to their state Senators in two easy clicks to get behind marriage equality.

“On such a dispiriting day for the state of California, MYD and our partners are doing everything we can in the fight for marriage equality in the Empire State,” said Al Benninghoff, MYD President. “With help from Speaker Quinn in hand delivering the letters generated from newyorkequality.com, we’re hoping our state Senators will heed the call from New Yorkers that we demand marriage equality.”

"I am so proud to personally deliver these letters today to the State Senate--letters from New Yorkers of all shades of life that speak to the growing consensus among New Yorkers that all deserve equal rights," said NYC Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn. "It was great to work closely with the Manhattan Young Democrats who collected nearly 1,500 letters online at newyorkequality.com, which is a true testament to the unwavering power of grassroots organizing. I encourage everyone in favor of marriage equality to write letters of their own and call their State Senator to urge them to support equal rights."

Former Obama staff and grassroots coordinators, who are now leaders of MYD, launched newyorkequality.com last week in anticipation of the New York State legislature’s upcoming vote on marriage equality. Newyorkequality.com serves as an online, intuitive platform for New Yorkers to reach out directly to their state Senators to inform them that New Yorkers demand marriage equality. Since its launch, constituents have sent nearly 2,000 email letters to their state Senators.

As I mentioned my sad CNN Film Fest video didn't make the cut because of a pesky little thing like a deadline... 12th not 21st OOPS.

Luckily, however, there are some REALLY GOOD YOUTHY VIDEOS that I urge you to support with your vote. Surprise they are all about Obama!!

They are all here and votable, I'm a fan of 1, 5, and 6, so these are in no particular order. Feel free to talk about your favorites via the comment section!

See them all below the jump

1. Yes You Can

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

To see the whole story on this see previous blog here

Friday Night on Larry King both conservatives Joe "Pags" Pagliarulo and Jonah Goldberg say that ACORN is lying about their actions in registering voters.

Once again - ACORN is required by law to turn in every voter registration form. They flag the ones they believe are not real or accurate, and ACORN stated before this video was cut that they went so far as to communicate to these BOE's what was going on.

The ACORN spokesperson also said that every two weeks ACORN turns in voter registration forms, so the fact that these folks are just now coming out with there being "problems" is suspect because the most recent registration documents are only the last two weeks - so how is it that they have such HUGE stacks of people from way back when that they are only NOW beginning to talk about?

Bumped - Kevin

Crossposted at Politics of the Common Good.

On pushback, Lee Fang posted a transcript of an interesting interview taking place on CNN. The guest was Ben Ferguson, a 27 year old right-winger. Fang describes him as "the media's go-to guy for all matters relating to young people and conservative politics." Of course, Fang also points out Ben's credentials: "He abhors MTV and popular youth culture, is a proud virgin, and routinely mocks progressive causes through his nationally syndicated talk-show and newspaper column." Let's take a look:

FOREMAN: Ben, let me ask you this question then. If you’re a young conservative and you’d like more people to support McCain, presumably, what does John McCain do at his age to reach across that gap because truly there are so many young people who I run into who say, I respect him, he’s a great guy, he’s wonderful. But he’s so different than me.

FERGUSON: I’ll be honest with you, if I’m advising John McCain right now, I would tell him to not inspire young people to come out and vote because for every one he turns out to vote for him, he’ll end up inspiring two or three other people to come out and vote for Barack Obama.

FOREMAN: Let’s not get out the youth vote movement?

FERGUSON: Yes, if you’re John McCain, I wouldn’t want to inspire young people. That’s going to get that movement vote to kick your tail. And that’s the last thing he needs to do.

Emphasis added. Well, first -- it's a good thing Ferguson is only a talk show host, because that advice is deplorable.

But let's assume Ferguson's contention that McCain should stay away from inspiring young people for fear of actually pushing more toward Obama is true (which, it very well may be). And let's bring in what we know about the connections between a healthy democracy and engaged young voters:

A healthy democracy requires that people learn, listen, dream, and work together as they unleash their collective potential to build the common good. When young people are excluded from participation in this dynamic, the potential for common good is deeply diminished. Despite a common misperception of today’s youth as self-absorbed and uninvolved, in example after example, young people ages 15 to 25 demonstrate a strong desire to engage actively in the work of building a just national and global society. This high degree of youth involvement not only develops leadership and civic skills in young people, but also adds much needed energy and perspective into community change efforts, policy debates, and governance at all levels.

With all of this in mind, isn't Ferguson's proposal indicating that a victory by McCain might not be the best thing for a democracy? My political sympathies aside, that's what I'm thinking when I read the transcript of Ferguson's statement. Choosing not to inspire younger voters goes against everything I have been taught to believe about the democratic process.

Granted, Ferguson does not play a role in the McCain campaign. But an appraisal of his campaign keeps me from thinking that McCain isn't taking some of Ferguson's advice. We know McCain exerts great energy trying to figure out the Internet, which is where young people are increasingly getting their news and information about the campaign. We know he's not put forth any plan for national service outside of the military (young voters are service all-stars). We know he's not exactly forthcoming with plans for higher education, a hallmark issue for today's youngest voters. While it's probably not that groundbreaking for many readers of Future Majority and my own blog, it would appear that McCain does indeed have a "youthiness" problem.

One more thing about Ferguson, though. When pushback's Lee Fang quoted the transcript, he cut out one of the most annoying and grating things for me to hear or read from any political observer -- something that immediately erases any ounce of credibility they may have had with me.

FERGUSON: There were more young people that voted but it was the same percentage of the overall vote because overall, more people voted in the last election than the one before it. So I don't know if they're necessarily going to show up. They thought they were going to show up for John Kerry and they didn't.

The young people, do they have an opinion? Yes. Does that mean they're going to go vote? I don't think so.

Ben Ferguson, meet Michael Connery:

Turnout vs. Share: There's a sub-theme to be aware of here as well. There are two ways of measuring how a demographic performs during an election. These are turnout and share of the electorate, and the media has a hard time distinguishing between the two. Turnout means the hard number of people participating. In the IADP data above, 4,836 18-24 year olds caucused. That's the hard turnout number for that age demographic. You'll also notice that the data states that 18-24 year olds made up 3.9% of caucus goers in 2004. That's the share of the electorate for that age demographic. These two numbers can present very different pictures of demographic performance. The 2004 general election provides us with an excellent example.

In 2000, 18-29 year olds made up 17% of the electorate. That was their share of the electorate. In 2004, 18-29 year olds once again comprised 17% of the electorate. The "logical" conclusion is that the youth vote did not increase, and that was what the media reported on November 5th, 2004. Of course, this was wrong. If one examined the actual turnout numbers, it quickly became apparent that there was a huge increase in youth participation. In fact, 4.3 million more 18-29 year olds turned out in 2004 than did in 2000. That increase didn't appear in the share of the electorate data because turnout increased among all age demographics. In order to get a sense of what happened with young voters this year, we'll need to examine not only their share of the electorate, but also the hard turnout numbers. The media missed this in 2004, and the campaigns and youth advocates will all be checking this data to make sure that the campaigns and press don't make the same mistakes twice.

Ferguson can't distinguish between share and turnout. Just because many other people turned out to vote in 2004 outside of the 18-29 age bracket does not mean those aged 18-29 should be criticized and believed to be a disappointment yet again. The truth that Ferguson and other ignorant political observers want to ignore is that there is a trend toward increased voting among youth (which I think is related to Ferguson and McCain's avoidance of this demographic).

So what does all of this mean?

1.) Ben Ferguson might just have a career in the "vast right wing conspiracy," given his ability to repeat untruths and act like he knows what he's talking about.

2.) John McCain, if he is pursuing a "youth avoidance" strategy like it currently appears, would ostensibly be running counter to healthy democratic values.

While you are waiting for the PA results to come in, check out these stories around the internets:

• The DNC has an excellent primer on all things related to the Democratic Convention: Delegates, Super Delegates, and more.
• The New York Times notes that age is the biggest predictor of support (aside from race) in the Democratic primary, a trend I'm sure we'll see play out later tonight.
• MySpace has teamed up with NBC news to produce a snazzy new political section to their website: Decision '08. This is very similar to the partnership ABC forged with FaceBook. For MySpace's sake, I hope it's more effective. And if anyone is reading, or goodness sake, please stop the video from auto-playing. The last thing I want is Chris Matthews blaring at me whenever I hit your site.
• U.S. cell phone voters would like to be able to vote via text.
• Bush's approval ratings are the lowest of any President in the last 70 years. Maybe that's why he decided it was a good idea to appear on Deal or No Deal last night.
• The Nation has launched their annual student writing contest.
• CNN's League of First Time Voters, which you may be hearing about tonight, is catching flack from youth activists.
• Finally, students in Washington and Arizona are competing to see who can register more new voters on Facebook:

CNN has a new subsite within their www.cnn.com site specifically for The League of 1st Time Voters (not to be confused with the League of Young Voters)

See the League Here

Pretty cool when you have the most successful cable news network focusing more on young voters than the republican candidate for the Presidency.

Against my better judgement, here's my segment from CNN. God I hate watching myself on TV . . . .

As I said, I was a little blind-sided by the first two questions, and think that I could have given a stronger answer to the final question. The real proof of excitement among young voters is the turnout, which has been double, triple, even quadruple 2004 numbers in some states.

I also said "I don't know," which is the one thing you don't ever do. The sad thing is, I do have an answer for that question - lower income and education voters are lower information voters, and Hillary has higher name recognition. The interesting thing is that this is changing as the campaign progresses and more voters get to better know Sen. Obama. During the recent Potomac Primaries, Obama swept all income and education demographics.

Finally, I was wrong about the book and website - those were both mentioned, though on the bottom bar, not the "bio" sidebar that popped up early in the segment.