voter turnout

Ian from the Oregon Bus Project writes in to let me know that in just a few short years, Oregon has gone from having the largest gap between youth vote turnout and general turnout to one of the smallest:

In 2004, Oregon saw the second largest gap in turnout between older and younger votes in the nation. In 2008, Oregon's youth took Oregon from the back of the pack to near the front. Just one presidential election ago, Oregon's 18 to 29-year-olds turned out at a 25 point lower rate than those 30 and over. In 2008, we shrunk that gap to just over 10 points.

In terms of shrinking that gap, Oregon was #1 with a bullet. (Obama effect was nationwide … this is something that makes Oregon special.) Pretty frickin' cool.

This really is a testament to the work, and creativity of the youth vote community in Oregon, and the larger Bus Federation as a whole, which has done pioneering work with programs like Trick or Vote and Candidates Gone Wild.

Loaded Orygun has more.

Earlier this week I posted two blog entries commenting on a post by Erica Williams pertaining to the current state of youth organizing. Erica made one final point that I'd still like to address:

Who are we kidding? Many people voted because of Obama. Deal with it. I think one of the main failures of youth vote advocates this election season was in the shallowness and transparency of our messaging. The message that “young people voted on the issues” never broke through to mainstream media because it frankly wasn’t true. It was a message set up to support our organizational missions and demand legitimacy and credibility not just for our constituency, but mostly for our own work. And I understand that. But there is a difference between saying that young people care about the issues – that is true – and that young people voted because they care about the issues – not true. You can care about issues and stay your butt home on the first Tuesday in November, particularly in our communities (young, black, latino, disenfranchised). Because guess what? Young people have always cared about not having clean air to breathe, or money in their pockets, or their loved ones at war. And while yes, the past 8 years have brought us to a boiling point, logic would not tell our communities that voting is the solution. Obama is what made them channel their frustration about the issues onto the ballot. And denying that reality is going to make tomorrow a cold blast of water when we go back to our newly registered voters and find out that they actually know very little about “the issues” or how those issues will really be changed.

Erica's comments are made in response to a specific conference of the Generational Alliance - a coalition of youth-centric organizations focused on electoral politics, policy, and leadership development. I didn't attend that conference so I don't know what specific comments she might be responding to. As such, I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree with her here, but I would like to lay out my thinking on the relationship between Obama, policy issues, and increased voter turnout.

First, having worked in cooperation with a number of c4 and 527 groups during the election on their communications, I don't think it would be accurate to say that the message coming out of those organizations - or even any of the major c3s - was that "young people voted on the issues." The major themes coming out of most youth organizations and spokespersons this year were:

• Youth turnout is rising and that growth is a trend not a blip.
• Youth turnout is directly related to the quality and quantity of contacts they receive from campaigns and political organizations (aka - young people will participate if you ask them, and peer to peer engagement is the gold standard for making that ask).

A lot of time was also spent educating reporters about the proper way to interpret the youth turnout numbers on election day and avoid making the same mistakes in their coverage that were made in 2004. We can always have more media hits and more spokespeople on TV, but judging from the quality of stories I've read that echo these main points, I think we did a bang-up job this year in managing the media narrative around the youth vote.

Moving back to the question of whether or not "youth voted on the issues," I think that it's a little harder to disaggregate issues from Obama in the turnout equation than Erica's post suggests. Yes, it is possible to care about the issues and not vote. But those who do vote almost certainly care about the issues. And what exactly does it mean to say that "young people voted because of Obama?"

Nationally, 25% of young people who voted said they were contacted by the Obama campaign. That number climbed as high as 50 or 60% in battleground states. This was the peer to peer campaign (online and offline) that so many of us were pitching in our talking points, and for which we've pushed since early 2003. While I'm a firm believer that the medium (peer contacts, not media buys and robo calls) is more important than the message, these contacts didn't lack in content. They did in fact have a message, and that message was often issue based - touching on higher education costs, the lack of good jobs, the need for a green economy, and the desire to responsibly withdraw from Iraq. On the stump and in the debates, Obama frequently made direct appeals to young voters based on these issues, and on everything from the war to stem cell research young voters were presented with a clear choice between the two candidates.

The media may have lampooned the Obama campaign's celebrity power, but it's not like all these contacts, and all of Obama's stump appearances, amounted to nothing more than a call to "vote for me because I'm awesome." There was a little more substance than that, even if we junkies craved even more substance than was offered. Expecting more than that, I think, is unreasonable. The percentage of voters - among all age groups - who cast their ballots based on the minutia of policy are so small as to be an insignificant portion of the electorate. Using such a standard as a talking point to the media is, I think foolhardy (if in fact that was the message some orgs tried to send), but to rate the quality of youth involvement or the effectiveness of youth organizations on the policy knowledge of the electorate seems unfair.

Bottom line for me - yes they voted because of Obama, but they did so because he invested real resources in reaching out to them and engaging them in a peer to peer manner, and the content of that engagement spoke directly to the issues that are of concern to young people. That's exactly the message that many of us in youth organizing have been trying to get across since 2003.

(It's also worth noting that such young people did, in fact, exist):

Once again, Gallup is trumpeting data claiming that youth interest in the election is the same as it was on 2004. The headline on their latest piece is "Little Evidence of Youth Surge." I've already seen this picked up on half a dozen blogs, including on Digby.

Here's what everyone should know about this Gallup poll:

• The margin of error for the youth sample is huge: +/- 7%.

So while Gallup's poll may show that young people are no more engaged than they were in 2004, and are still less likely to vote than older demographics . . .

. . . the margin of error is quite large. In addition, it may be hard to remember now, but there was a LOT of excitement in 2004, and it was excitement we saw on both sides of the aisle during a very close contest. By contrast, this election has all the signs of a blowout, and McCain's campaign has zero youth outreach and is actually kicking their own young supporters out of their events. There's a decent possibility that young McCain supporters are acting as a drag on these numbers. Look at the disproportionate amount of time and resources each campaign is devoting to energizing its young supporters (from Gallup's own data):

Regardless of self-reported measures of interest, the most interesting youth-vote statistic to watch on Tuesday won't be turnout, it will be the margin of victory that Obama enjoys over McCain. As I wrote yesterday in my post about Tips for Reporting the Youth Vote:

5. The margin of victory among young voters may be just as important as the overall increase in youth turnout. In 2004, 20 million young voters cast a ballot, with 54% selecting John Kerry. That gave Kerry an advantage of 1.6 million votes over President Bush among young voters. This year, if 22 million young voters cast ballots and 62% choosing Obama vs. 38% for McCain (numbers roughly found in most polling), that would give Senator Obama an advantage of 5.28 million votes.

One more thing about the Gallup poll - they are consistently underestimating youth share of the electorate, even in their "expanded likely voter model."

As a result, 18- to 29-year-olds now constitute 12% of Gallup's traditional likely voter sample, basically the same as the estimate in the final 2004 pre-election poll (13%). Gallup's expanded likely voter model, which defines likely voters differently (on the basis of current voting intentions only), estimates a slightly higher proportion of young voters in the electorate (14%). However, even if the share of the youth vote were adjusted upward, doing so has little or no impact on the overall Obama-McCain horse-race numbers using either likely voter model.

I'm loathe to look into a crystal ball and predict youth turnout, but young voters made up 16 - 17% of the electorate in 2004 (depending in the source of the data, Current Population Survey and Exit Polling, respectively). Gallup is setting the youth share in their models at 12 - 14%, at least two points lower.

For anyone taking the Gallup poll - or any other poll prematurely calling the youth vote - seriously, I recommend reading and spreading my Tips for Reporting on the Youth Vote. It's a good way to avoid the hysteria and common mistakes that frequently surround youth vote reporting.

In 2007, just before the primaries, I created a "cheat sheet" for journalists to correct common misperceptions about the youth vote, and help journalist accurately report on young voter turnout. It was pretty well received and even got picked up for an anthology about new media.

Judging from some of the reporting we've seen this year, I thought an updated version geared towards the general election would be useful:

1. When reporting on youth participation, do not confuse "share of the electorate" with "turnout." Share of the electorate is a measure of the proportion of young voters who cast a ballot in relation to all other voters. Turnout is the percentage of all eligible young voters who cast a ballot. Share measures the influence of young voters within the electorate as a whole. Turnout tells us whether or not more young people showed up at the polls. Please do not confuse them.

2. It is possible for turnout to rise, while share of the electorate remains steady. Indeed, this is exactly what happened in 2004. Young voter turnout (18 - 29) increased by 9 percentage points from 40 to 49% (an increase of about 4.3 million votes). However, young voter's share of the electorate remained steady at 17%.

3. Young voters can only be held accountable for their own actions, not those of the entire electorate. If the youth vote's share of the electorate holds steady from 2004 to 2008, that will mean that older voters also went to the polls in higher numbers. Young voters cannot be held accountable for that. As such, turnout and the hard number of votes are the only accurate measure to gauge the success of efforts to get out young voters.

4. Rising youth turnout is a trend, not a fad tied to the popularity of Senator Obama. Contrary to conventional wisdom, or media reports from 2004, Obama's campaign is not solely responsible for higher youth turnout, though it has played a crucial role during this election cycle. Youth turnout began to rise in 2004, when youth it jumped by 9 percentage points, from 40 to 49%, and 4.3 million more young voters cast a ballot than in 2000. This trend continued in 2006, which saw the first increase in young voter turnout during a midterm election since the 1980s. It reached a new height in early 2008 when youth turnout in the primaries was double that from 2000, the last comparable year. In some states, youth turnout in the primaries was triple or quadruple that of previous years.

5. The margin of victory among young voters may be just as important as the overall increase in youth turnout. In 2004, 20 million young voters cast a ballot, with 54% selecting John Kerry. That gave Kerry an advantage of 1.6 million votes over President Bush among young voters. This year, if 22 million young voters cast ballots and 62% choosing Obama vs. 38% for McCain (numbers roughly found in most polling), that would give Senator Obama an advantage of 5.28 million votes.

6. Youth turnout is about access, not apathy. When young people are registered to vote - they turn out. According to the US Census, 81.6% of all registered young voters actually cast a ballot in 2004. That is on par with other portions of electorate. The more campaigns and independent organizations work to register young voters, and the easier we make the registration process, the higher youth turnout will be.

7. Regardless of youth turnout on Tuesday, young voters have already played a crucial and decisive role in this contest. In the Iowa Democratic caucuses, young voter turnout tripled and their share of caucus-goers was equal to that of the "reliable" 65+ demographic. Obama won the support of 60% of Iowa's youth, catapulting him to the front of the Democratic pack. Similar levels of support from youth in the following primaries and caucuses were the foundation of Obama's primary success.

Here's an interesting writeup in the Washington Post of a 2006 Green and Gerber study showing that public shame may be the highest motivator for civic participation. I'm not kidding.

Here are the results of Gerber and Green's experiment, in which a controlled sample of voters were matched up against groups that received four different messages about an upcoming election:

"These were the most homely pieces of direct mail in the history of direct mail," said Green, who works at Yale University. "They were sheets of computer paper. They had no graphics and used block courier type. They are the exact opposite of the slick four-color mailings that campaigns send out."

Homely though they were, the letters had a powerful effect. The control group's turnout rate was slightly less than 30 percent. Among those who received the "civic pride" letter, turnout was 6 percent higher than the control group's. Among those who were told they were being studied, it was 12 percent higher. Among those who were shown whether they had voted in the previous election, the turnout was 16 percent higher.

And telling people what everyone in the neighborhood had done the previous Election Day -- and letting them know that they would be similarly informed about the current election -- boosted turnout by 27 percent.

Shame and publicity - peer pressure - can be a powerful motivator, it seems. And when the government/campaign/party is going to snitch on you, people get their butts out to vote.

The effectiveness of snitching on neighbors exceeded that of live telephone calls and rivaled that of laborious, face-to-face canvassing, the political scientists wrote in an article published in the American Political Science Review this year. Direct mail costs peanuts compared with other techniques.

Interestingly, Green and Gerber trace the decline in voting among Americans of all ages to the rise of the secret ballot. Their theory: voting used to be a very public and social act. Once those social bonds were severed, turnout declined:

Elections in the mid-19th century were festive affairs, and people gathered to carouse, jostle one another and vote. They sometimes cast their ballots on a stage to cheers and jeers. Voting, even their choice of candidates, used to be extremely public.

A series of progressive reforms in the late 19th century turned voting into a private affair. Campaign operatives were kept clear of polling stations. People got to vote in secret, and few knew whether their neighbors voted.

Turnout plummeted.

What this suggests is that, besides civic pride and political conviction, a central reason people vote is that democratic participation is an intensely social act. Politics, candidates and campaigns offer us zones of connection with other citizens -- even our political opponents. It gives millions of people common topics of conversation.

It's too late to really incorporate this kind of messaging into a campaign, but it raises some interesting possibilities for the 2010 midterms.

This is a guest post by Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, the authors of Millennial Makeover. --Mike

As admirers of Curtis Gans' research on voter turnout, it pained us to read his Baby Boomer-oriented screed attacking the Millennial Generation, even denying the existence of the Millennials, for not acting exactly like the Boomers did when they were young. Aging Boomers like Tom Friedman have made the same public mistake, demonstrating just how convinced many leading thinkers among the Boomer Generation are that the political style of young people today is not like their own youthful political behavior was and is, therefore, not appropriate or useful. While it would be easy to address this error by simply commenting admiringly on Mike Connery’s excellent blog dissecting Gans' diatribe, the egregious nature of Gans' comments warrants a more fulsome response.

Since Gans' research report was focused on, in his words, the increased, “almost record,” turnout in this year’s presidential primaries, it is particularly surprising that he chose this vehicle to announce his distaste for the Millennial Generation and its political style. Gans cites the work of William Damon as the source of his knowledge about this generation, which is strange given the large number of more well-documented studies of the Millennial Generation disproving Damon’s contention that the parents of Millennials are “creating a generation of young people who lack confidence and direction.” The evidence shows just the opposite. If anything, employers and teachers who interact daily with Millennials complain that they are almost too confident, to the point of sounding “cheeky.”

This generation's self-confidence and orientation toward the group and the broader society has important political implications. Recent polling data from USAToday/CNN demonstrate that Millennials are paying close attention to the 2008 election and have every intention of voting, at numbers rivaling those of older voters. Their survey of more than 900 young Americans, taken Sept. 18-28 found that:

• 75 % of Millennials are registered to vote
• 73% plan to vote
• 64% have given "quite a lot" of thought to the election

Even Gans concedes that Millennials may vote in large numbers in this election. But he says that they will do so only because of their fondness for Senator Barack Obama and not because of any long-term commitment to the political process. Millennials he says

“were brought in by the uniqueness of Obama’s candidacy—precisely because he seemed to offer something different than the politics they had been eschewing.” He continues, “they won’t stay in if he’s not elected and their interest and engagement won’t be sustained if he does not live up to the promise of his candidacy once in office.”

Gans makes this assertion in spite of having no data to support it.

There is no doubt that Millennials have responded very positively to Senator Obama and his candidacy and that the Obama campaign has strongly targeted this generation. Millennials supported Obama overwhelmingly in this year's Democratic primaries and virtually all current general election surveys indicate that Millennials favor him over John McCain by at least a 2:1 margin.

But the political attitudes and identifications of Millennials were clearly evident long before the Obama candidacy gained widespread visibility. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in March 2007 indicated that Millennials identified as Democrats over Republicans by nearly a 2:1 ratio (52% vs. 30%). And, a study conducted at about the same time by the Millennial Strategy Program of communication research and consultation firm Frank N. Magid Associates showed that Millennials were the first generation since at least the GI Generation to contain a greater number of self-perceived liberals than conservatives. All of this at least raises the possibility that the high level of Millennial political involvement is significantly based on the Democratic and liberal affinities of the generation and would be strong even without Obama's strong candidacy.

Gans makes it clear why he is sure that the political involvement of Millennials stems solely from their attachment to Barack Obama. He yearns for the “idealistic activism” of the 1950s and 1960s when, according to Gans, all of America shared a “different ethos” thanks to an educational system based “on John Dewey’s philosophy.” Since, in Gans' mind, the emerging Millennial Generation doesn’t share the liberal idealism of his own youth, it cannot possibly sustain its current level of political activity. If only it were so, Curtis.

In fact, the ideological ferment of the late 1960s, led by half of the Baby Boomer Generation’s counter-cultural rebellion against authority, and the reaction against this social turmoil by the other half of Boomer Generation, produced the political gridlock that caused the very cynicism in the older portions of the electorate that Gans decries. Even his own expert on the Millennial Generation, William Damon, concedes that Millennials “are working hard, doing well enough in school, and staying out of trouble.” Indeed, America is enjoying far lower levels of socially deviant behavior, such as teen age pregnancy and crime, since these indicators began to soar during the adolescent years the Baby Boomer Generation with its disdain for social rules and convention.

But Gans' own words demonstrate the flaw in his thinking. The 1950s that he writes about so nostalgically was actually an era dominated by the behavior and ethos of the GI Generation, another “civic” generational archetype, just like Millennials, not by his beloved Boomers. That generation put FDR in the White House, brought about the New Deal approach to progressive government, defeated fascism in WWII, and voted at rates greater than those of previous generations. Their Democratic loyalty lasted a lifetime: the last remaining members of the GI Generation and the first sliver of Millennials provided the only pluralities for John Kerry over George W. Bush among any of the generational cohorts voting in 2004.

The previous falloff in voting by young people described by Gans in his diatribe is completely explained by the generational attitudes and behaviors of Boomers and Gen-Xers as they moved into and out of young adulthood. One generation, Boomers, initially turned out to vote spurred by admirable idealism and then often left the political process when they discovered in Gans’ telling phrase, that “their leaders showed feet of clay.” The other, Generation X, never bothered to participate in large numbers having been discouraged by the political gridlock Boomers had created. Now that Millennials make up the entire population of voters 26 and under in this election, you can be assured that they will not only vote at rates comparable to older voters, just like their GI Generation great-grandparents did, but they will also continue to vote heavily and participate vigorously in the nation’s political process for the rest of their lives.

They will do so, because unlike Curtis Gans and his ilk, who never were able to translate their idealism into action, Millennials are intent on working together to create a better America than the one Boomers have left them as an inheritance. Their confidence, political activism, and unity will begin to initiate that change on Election Day this year thanks to a record turnout of young voters. The 1.7 million vote plurality given to John Kerry by young voters in 2004 will grow to between 8 and 10 million for Barack Obama when this involved and unified generation goes to the polls on November 4. Only Curtis Gans and out of touch Boomers will be surprised.

A press release from the Student PIRGs just hit my inbox. In the next week, 29 states will reach their voter registration deadlines. As we know from previous elections, at least 70% of registered youth will actually cast their ballots on election day. Getting a high young voter turnout/share of the electorate depends on making sure as many youth as possible are registered now, before those deadlines hit.

Here's what the student PIRGs are doing this week:

The Student PIRGs are running student voter mobilization efforts on 150 campuses in 24 states this fall. Campuses that will see a last push this week to register student voters include:

University of Colorado (Boulder, CO)
University of Colorado (Denver, CO)
Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO)
University of Northern Colorado (Greeley, CO)
University of Florida (Gainesville, FL)
University of Southern Florida (Tampa, FL)
Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL)
Temple University (Philadelphia, PA)
Ohio State University (Columbus, OH)
University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, OH)
Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH)
Indiana University (Bloomington, IN)
University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ)
Northern Arizona University (Flagstaff, AZ)
Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ)
Arizona State University – West (Phoenix, AZ)
Northwestern University (Chicago, IL)
Meramec Community College (St Louis, MO)
North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC)
University of Washington (Seattle, WA)
Green River Community College (Auburn, WA)
University of Montana (Missoula, MT)

What are you doing?

Yesterday I was quoted in a Politico story about celebrity outreach to young voters. Curtis Gans was also quoted, making much the same argument he did in the report I blogged earlier today (emphasis mine):

But Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, cautions against concluding that there’s a causal relationship — and against ignoring the influence of the candidates themselves.

“It really depends on the fertility of the field,” Gans said. “The best example is that, in 1992, Rock the Vote claimed credit for a large surge in youth turnout. But using precisely the same methodology in 1996, youth turnout was the lowest ever. ... The same performers that got people to register in 1992 could not get people to register in 1996.”

Gans attributes the turnout spike in the last presidential election cycle to opposition to President Bush, even though it was not enough for John F. Kerry to defeat him.

Here's the problem - they didn't use the same methodology. In 1992, Rock the Vote had a huge field program. It was that field component, combined with the competitive election, the economic crisis, and the novelty of Rock the Vote as an institution that accounted for the large upswing in young voter participation. By 1996, the novelty had worn off and the field program had fallen into shambles. The Rock the Vote of 1996 was mostly a media campaign. It was not the same organization or the exact same methodology as in 1992.

Now, Gans is right that the economic upswing and the lack of a competitive race played a role in driving down youth turnout, but it was not the only factor by any means. The bottom line is this: Gans consistently ignores the role of traditional and non traditional field work aimed at young voters in increasing young voter turnout. It seems to be his blind spot.

Curtis Gans, a respected election expert operating out of American University, has a completely bizarre report out today on the lack of causation or correlation between primary turnout and turnout in the general election. I say bizarre because the report, which contains 4 pages of data, quickly devolves into 6 pages of "commentary" that only tangentially focuses on the relationship between primary and general election turnout. Instead, it reads more like a screed on what Gans thinks is wrong with our country and political system in 2008.

Gans is right when he says that there is no relationship between national primary turnout and national general election turnout. Of course there isn't. There are too many factors - such as how competitive the primary process is that year, whether one or both parties have competitive contests, how long those contests drag on, etc. - that can tip the balance for their to be any direct relationship.

But that's an overly broad question. The more interesting question to ask would have been "is there a direct correlation between primary and GE turnout for specific demographics?" For instance, if young voters turnout in record numbers in a Democratic primary, do we then see record numbers of Democratic youth turning out in the General Election? Or, if evangelical christians vote in record numbers in a Republican primary, do they also vote in record numbers in the General Election? And do those trends repeat throughout history? That would be useful information, and might give us a better idea what to expect in November, but Gans isn't asking those questions.

More important to me at the moment, though, is Gans' attempts to "debunk" the idea that there is a civically engaged demographic called the "Millennial Generation." To the extent that Gans is respected and is often quoted in the media, this deserves a response.

There Is No Millennial Generation: The large-scale involvement of college resident and educated youth is one of the most heartening aspects of this year’s nominating process. But the conclusions some have drawn from that participation—that we have a new politically engaged generation—is simply not supported by the facts.

Those involved this year are a fraction of the youth population and were brought in by the uniqueness of Obama’s candidacy—precisely because he seemed to offer something different than the politics they had been eschewing. They would not have stayed in—at least in anywhere near the numbers which have participated in the primaries—had Obama not won the nomination. They won’t stay in if he’s not elected and their interest and engagement won’t be sustained if he does not live up to the promise of his candidacy once in office.

What Gans ignores here is the fact that increased in youth turnout did not start with Obama, nor are they totally attributable to his candidacy. The youth vote increased significantly in 2004, and again in 2006 (pdfs). In neither case was Barack Obama on the ballot, nor did he have an active campaign operating that might boost turnout. This is not to say that Obama himself, and his candidacy, are not attracting new voters in greater numbers than we might have otherwise seen. But recent trends all suggest that youth participation in the 2008 election would have increased even without Obama's candidacy.

Gans' argument also neglects the fact that increased youth turnout is not a spontaneous event, but rather the result of hard work put out by many thousands of activists engaging in electoral politics, or the "electoral specialists" as the National Conference on Citizenship's 2008 Civic Health Index (pdf) calls them. It is due to the countless hours in the field spent door knocking and peer to peer organizing that was responsible for vote increases among young people in 2004 and 2006, and it is Obama's adoption of those peer to peer tactics that has made his campaign similarly successful among youth not just in polls, but at the voting booth.

Gans, of course, disagrees. He thinks that 2004 and 2006 were a result of anti-Bush sentiment. In the words of the great Jeffrey Lebowski: "That's just like, your opinion, man." Gans has no data to back up that claim, only his gut. But there is plenty of data to show that young voter outreach programs were of great effect at increasing turnout in 2004 and 2006. What's more, with the notable exception of Pennsylvania, every swing state targeted heavily by youth vote organizers in 2004 overperformed the national turnout average for young voters (pdf), climbing as high as 71% in Minnesota and 65% in Wisconsin. How does Gans explain that? Was anti-Bush sentiment greater in these swing states than in other states? Or did the targeted outreach actually have an impact?

Gans does try to answer that question:

The involvement of middle-class educated youth this year is not an isolated phenomenon. There is a reservoir of idealism, hope and a willingness to engage that has been part of every generation. In my lifetime, some of this group were madly for Adlai, others were engaged by the youth and energy of John F. Kennedy, still others formed the foot soldiers of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements and came clean for Gene (McCarthy) in New Hampshire’s primary campaign. They also were, for about eight months, enticed by the policy wonkishness on issues they cared about of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, were taken for about a month or two by the 2000 candidacy of John McCain and the 2004 candidacy of Howard Dean and came out in force in the battleground states against President Bush through the proxy of working for Sen. John Kerry.

So if I read that last bit right, young people aren't involved except when they are, but then it's only because their motives are in the wrong place? That's just rampant speculation and Gans has no data with which to backup his claims

I also disagree with Gans' implication that the kind of engagement we're seeing now is the same as it ever was among "middle class educated youth." While political participation is still not where it should be, young people today are more engaged in many aspects of civic and community life than Gen X and Boomers. As the NCOC Civic Health Index points out, that involvement just takes different forms in response to radically different times. From the NCOC report:

The Millennials so far appear to be considerably more civically engaged than their immediate predecessors, “Generation X.” The voting turnout of young adults (ages 18-29) almost doubled in the 2008 primaries and caucuses compared to the most recent comparable year (2000). There were also substantial youth turnout increases in 2004 and 2006. Youth volunteering rates are higher in the 2000s than they were in the 1990s.

Compared to the Baby Boomers when they were young adults, Millennials are somewhat more likely to volunteer. They are less likely to vote and to participate in face-to-face civil society, as reflected by questions about attending meetings, belonging to groups, and attending religious services. Declines in face-to-face engagement occurred before the widespread use of the Internet; but clearly, today’s youth have new opportunities for online interaction. Overall, if we compare Millennials to previous generations when they were young, the Millennials appear more engaged than Generation X and engaged in different ways from the Boomers.

The NCOC report concedes that Millennials are not as directly involved in politics as they could/should be, and not as engaged in politics as Boomers were when they were young, but the trends are all favorable in this respect, and the report points to the internet as a growing tool through which to bridge the participation gap between "middle class, college educated kids" and non-college, lower income youth.

Ultimately, Gans comes off as nothing more than a crank, pining for the good old days. Is there any other way to read something like this?

The difference between the idealistic activism of the 1950s and 1960s and the activism of the 1980s and later is that the earlier generations were politically involved and interested and stayed in political activity even when their causes did not meet with success or their leaders showed feet of clay. They did so because there was a totally different ethos in America then. Schools were dominated by the ideas of John Dewey who made educated citizens a major educational aim. Parents discussed politics in the home. The media was more concentrated and more purposive. There was much less cynicism. The institutions underlying democracy were strong and well-aligned. People could and did work together across partisan and ideological lines. Great things were accomplished, people felt good about politics and government and wanted to be a part of that enterprise and believed their participation mattered.

Those who were briefly active in the 1980s and later did not stay involved. They didn’t because there is and has been for some time a totally different ethos. Participation in institutions has declined sharply. Media are fragmented and cynical. Politics tends to be a bad word, with most of the young having a dim view of the enterprise. Government is hamstrung by ideological polarization fed by political parties that are misaligned. Schools no longer train for citizenship (although some promote service which is not the same thing and does not have a carry-over effect to politics). Community has been eroded. Negativity in large volume dominates the conduct of politics. Civility is all too often absent. There is simply no grounding for a new engaged generation to emerge.

Yes, Generation X withdrew from politics and community, becoming a highly individualized generation for most of the 80s and 90s. Yes, our political and media system is in sorry shape. But study after study (Generation We, Millennial Makeover, Progressive Politics of the Millennial Generation, Harvard IOP Surveys) all show Millennials to be an optimistic, not cynical, generation. They show Millennials to be believers in community action and their own ability create change. The show Millennials to be believers in the responsibility and potential of government to do good in this country, even if they have little faith in the current actors occupying positions of power. In short, they portray Millennials as a generation with the self confidence, desire and new technologies to reshape the very broken systems Gans identifies.

Against all that, Gans throws out a statistics-free rant about the "good old days" that has but one message: "You kids get off my lawn."

This weekend Craig linked to an Op-Ed by Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com in the NY Post that extrapolated an Obama win in November if turnout trends from the primaries held true. I think the main thrust of the piece was correct, but I want to pick a little around the edges and tighten up some of the points Nate made.

In 2004, voters aged 29 or younger represented 9% of the Democratic primary electorate, according to statistics compiled from exit polls. In 2008, that fraction jumped to 14%, representing a 52% improvement as a share of the electorate. Those voters overwhelmingly favored Obama, preferring him to Hillary Clinton by a 60-37 margin.

What might a parallel surge in youth turnout do for Obama in November? My site, FiveThirtyEight.com, simulates the election 10,000 times each day based on the most recent polling and demographic trends. Our most current projection assigned Obama a 64% chance of winning the election, with an average count of 298 electoral votes. If, however, we assume that youth turnout increases by 52% in each state, as it did in the primaries, and assign two-thirds of those votes to Obama, Obama's electoral vote projection jumps to 315, and he wins the election 72% of the time.

Entire states may change hands as a result of motivating the youth vote, particularly in the South (think Virginia, North Carolina and possibly Georgia) and the West (Colorado, Nevada, Montana), where young voters are abundant.

Those are some amazing numbers. Here's the thing though. I'm not sure if Silver is talking about increased "turnout," the total number of youth who go to the polls (a hard, absolute number), or "share of the electorate," the percentage of youth in the electorate (a relative number determined in part by the turnout of other groups, and the number from which he derived the 52% increase figure).

Youth share of the electorate in 2004 was 17%. An increase of 52% would make young voters ~26% share of the electorate this November. That's awesome, but it will also mean that young voters, who represent about ~20% (pdf) of the eligible electorate, would have to overperform their share by ~5 - 6%.

If Silver is talking about turnout, youth turnout in 2004 was 49% (pdf). A 52% increase would mean that turnout in 2008 will be roughly 73%, or a 24 point increase. That too, seems quite high to me. In 2004, in the battleground states targeted by youth organizers, turnout topped off at 64%. That's a respectable 15 points ahead of the national average, but still a far cry from 73%.

Assuming that my math is correct here, Silver's estimates, while encouraging, are a bit over the top. What we saw during the primaries, I think, was a surge of mostly college-age or educated kids who would have voted anyway in November finally making the decision to get involved earlier in the process. Getting somewhat engaged, and mostly college, youth to become involved earlier is a whole different ball of wax than moving disengaged non-college youth to the polls. And that is exactly what the Obama campaign would need to do in order to meet Silver's predictions.

Unfortunately, there are just too many barriers to participation for young voters. And despite reassurances from staffers within the campaign, I think Obama will continue to focus too much of his youth effort solely on college campuses, which make up only a fraction of the youth vote. Personally, I'm expecting to see youth perform at their share of the electorate (20%), and the national turnout rate to hit somewhere between 55 and 64%. I would be very (and very pleasantly) surprised to see the national youth turnout average break that 64% ceiling.

All of this isn't to cast doubt on the importance of the youth vote, and it's not at all to say that youth won't turnout in record numbers. Let me state this unequivocally: I firmly believe that youth turnout will be large and will break records this year. But this is to say let's at least be realistic about what to expect.

In the NY Post piece, Silver makes two more points that I want to touch on. The first is about branding. In a follow-up piece on the 538 blog, Nate notes that powerful branding can be a double edged sword for Obama. It can draw in Millennials, but push away more cynical Gen Xers and Boomers. This weekend, Ad Age ran a very interesting piece on Obama's branding strategy that touched on this problem. I tend to agree with Ad Age. Gen Xers and Boomers who are inclined to vote for Obama may be repulsed by the slick branding and it may offend their loner/stay out of the crowd cultural ethic, but they're going to vote for Obama anyway because between McCain and Obama, only one candidate is going to represent the democratic cultural values that they do cherish.

On a personal note, I find that this is dating me. While I sit on the cusp of Gen X and the Millennials, I'm pro-Obama because of what I think he could do for the country, and I'm continually wowed by the branding skills of his campaign, but I'm also personally turned off by that aspect of the Obama campaign.

Finally, the piece closed with a few suggestions as to how Obama could ensure that young voters turnout in greater numbers this cycle:

Face Time. Ultimately, however, the trickiest issue in motivating the youth vote may be that young voters have too many things they want to do, and not enough time to do it. They are not as likely as older voters to be engaged in the campaign through traditional means like reading newspapers or watching cable news. As such, the campaign needs to get in front of them - in both real and virtual ways. The "real" part might involve organizing a tour of Midwestern colleges shortly after the Democratic Convention in late August or early September, at which Obama can kick off massive voter registration drives. The virtual part occurs mostly via the Internet, an area in which the Obama campaign already excels. He could further his efforts by hosting periodic online chat sessions at BarackObama.com, or by agreeing to participate in the YouTube New Orleans Town Hall forum on Sept. 18, which neither Obama nor McCain have yet committed to.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Not because Obama shouldn't do these things. Even John Kerry did these things (as much as he was technologically able). It's that these suggestions are wholly inadequate to achieve anything close to the turnout numbers Silver postulates earlier in his piece.

Focusing solely on college campuses won't do the trick because, as I stated above, only a small fraction of young voters reside on college campuses. And while they may be the easiest to motivate and organize, their numbers just aren't big enough by themselves to have the impact Silver - and all progressives - are hoping for.

Obama is going to need to move off campus. He's going to need to be at the places young voters hang out and targeting non-college youth at bars, concerts, barbershops, parks, coffee shops, apartment complexes and more. He's going to need the state by state infrastructure to conduct massive peer-to-peer field campaigns, which we know are the gold standard for driving young people to the polls. Yes, he's going to need to take advantage of the efficiencies offered by web video, user generated content, and social networks as a different kind of public, "third space," but as I've noted in the past, he's also going to need a lot of help.

So while I agree with the thrust of Silver's op-ed - if young people vote, Obama wins - I think in execution it's a whole lot more complicated than that.