women

This is a pretty substance-heavy Quick Hits. Any one of the items here should merit a full blog post. There's just not enough time, damn it! Not enough time . . .

• CNN Money has an almost great segment on how the economic downturn may be driving young voters to the polls. My only quibble - in the final line the reporter claims that in the past "young people were eager to register, but not to vote." That's just not true. 80% of registered young voters actually cast a ballot on election day. Registration is the problem, not turnout. Or, as I've been saying - higher youth turnout is not about curing apathy but increasing access. (h/t Chris Kennedy of Rock the Vote)

• In the wake of GOP voter suppression efforts that have ensnared young people and veterans in Montana, Forward Montana has launched Montana Voter Suppression (.org), a website to track, report, and prevent voter suppression efforts in the state. Earlier today, the group also held a protest in front of the office of MT Rep Dennis Rehberg's office. Rehberg's chief of staff, Erik Iverson, is the Chair of Montana GOP, the group behind the voter challenges.
• Speaking of voter suppression, Nancy Scola and Allison Fine have a spectacular post over at Tech President detailing how Twitter could be used as an election protection tool.
• GQRR has a new poll out, this time of women. The results show that unmarried women, including many young women, are the key to Obama's success among that demographic. Unmarried women are supporting Obama 62 - 33%. So much for the "Palin Effect."

• In Kansas, Jim Slattery is embarking on a campus tour to drum up youth support for his Senate campaign. All down-ballot candidates should consider this if they want to ride the youth wave to its fullest. As much as we'd like to think they do, Obama's coattail don't necessarily extend all the way down the ballot.
• Veterans group IAVA issued it's congressional score card today, and John McCain earned a big fat D. The Disabled Veterans of American didn't score him much better, giving the Senator a 20% rating. So much for supporting the troops.

I've never heard of Anderson Analytics before, so take this with a grain of salt, but in a poll of 1,000 students, they found that Sarah Palin's presence on the ticket did not help McCain draw support among college students generally, or among young women attending college:

Stamford, CT (PRWEB) September 30, 2008 -- According to the Anderson Analytics GenX2Z College Poll, 60% of college students (ages 17-34) prefer Senator Obama while only 25% prefer Senator McCain.

Interestingly, the choice of Sarah Palin does not seem to have helped McCain much among female college students. Females were significantly more likely than their male counterparts to prefer Obama (62.9% of females vs. 55.4% of males preferred Obama while only 23% of females vs. 28.4% of males preferred McCain).

The overall 34% youth vote difference between the two candidates is larger than what has been reported in earlier polls among youth. To benefit from the lead, Democrats need to ensure that these students actually visit the polls on Election Day.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow night's debate. Each new Katir Couric interview with Palin that comes out is another nail in the GOP coffin. All Biden has to do is sit back, direct his attacks at Bush and McCain, and say as little as possible. Sarah Palin will self-immolate during the 2 minute response periods when she won't be able to rely on straight talking points (or look foolish doing so).

Over at The New Republic, Elizabeth Cline wants to know why young women aren't voting for Sen. Clinton. Her answer seems to be twofold. First, non-college young people, who tend to favor Clinton, are not turning out in numbers as high as their college peers. Second, and more importantly, young women in college are living in a meritorcratic system with little to no gender bias, effectively neutering gender as a deciding factor in their politics:

Obama's support gets even stronger as voters get younger. Among college students, it's even stronger. As far back as April 2007, polls showed Obama with a 17-point lead over Clinton among college Democrats. During that same period, Obama's lead over Clinton was only three percentage points among 18-24 year-olds not enrolled in a four-year school. Fortunately for Obama, this non-college group has abysmal voter turnout. According to CIRCLE, in 2004, the voter turnout for college students and college graduates under 25 was 59 percent; it was 34 percent for non-graduates. In other words, those young voters are mostly college students or recent grads.

Anyone who has graduated in the last decade has anecdotes of guys who come to class late or hungover, while their female classmates seemed to have all their work done. College has become one corner of American life where hardworking females are consistently and fairly rewarded, and they are succeeding there, to a much greater degree than their male counterparts. It's possible, maybe even likely, to graduate college with little sense and zero experience of institutionalized gender discrimination--with almost complete freedom from the type of covert, daily setbacks that drive blacks to the polls for Obama and older women to vote for Clinton.

I don't know if it is true or not, but it is certainly an interesting theory.

Two quick things to note.

First, on the three theories as to how Clinton won the 25 - 29 vote, exit polling by The Harvard Institute of Politics suggests that it was NOT young women who drove Clinton to victory. According to the IOP, Obama and Clinton split young women (under 30) evenly. I spoke with John Della Volpe from the IOP, and he seemed to think that Clinton's messaging about issues to young voters (vs talk of hope) resonated with non-college youth, and he also thought that my theory about college graduates migrating out of state might be correct.

Also interesting - IOP gives Obama a narrow win among 25 - 29 year olds. I also saw some private polling from those involved in the Clinton campaign last night suggesting the same thing. CNN and the network exit polls MIGHT be wrong here.

Second, Rasmussen's youth cross tabs taken in the days prior to the New Hampshire primary showed a much tighter race than what we saw in Iowa:

Obama: 38%
Clinton: 26%
Edwards: 17%

Turns out his results were much closer to the truth. It's too bad he didn't break them down beyond 18 - 29, but the samples were probably impossibly small. So this wasn't entirely unpredictable. We, and I, bought into some of the hype.

The title sounds vaguely threatening, but its not. I swear.

Via polling (pdf) by Young Voter Strategies and Women's Voices, Women's Vote, and background info provided in the YVS newsletter (which I highly recommend subscribing to) I've got some statistics on single/married women between 18 and 29.

Single Women:

• 58% of unmarried women identify as Democrats. 21% as Independents.
• Iraq, Health Care, Jobs, and Education are their issues (in that order).

Married Women:

• 60% of women 18-30 who self-identify as Republicans are married. 43% of independents are married; 30% Democrats are married.
• Married women under 30 give Republicans an 8 point partisan advantage among their demographic.
• Married women care about Homeland Security, Iraq, and Jobs (in that order).

In 2008, young women (18-29) will equal 21 million eligible voters, and, like most young voters, partisan ID among young women still is not a lock. Single women are clearly a place that progressive groups and candidates should be focusing their resources, but I wonder if we should also look at applying some 50 state strategy here.