Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. speaks about the motivation of young voters that inspired them to take to the streets and celebrate their democracy. (1:53)
On Tuesday, young voters showed that their generation is “moving from revolutionary to solutionary,” said Hip Hop Caucus President, Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. at the Campus Progress event discussing youth voter turnout. Also in attendance was Kat Barr, Political Outreach Director for Rock the Vote; Amanda Carpenter, National Political Reporter for Townhall.com; and David Madland, Director of the American Worker Project for the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The panel discussed the major issues for youth voters such as the economy and the war in Iraq, as well as how to keep the youth civically engaged.
The panelists all agreed that this was a “fundamentally progressive election,” and Madland said that this generation is ideologically more progressive than any generation before them. Yearwood compared the election to the Civil Rights Movement because he said that “it became a movement” itself. To keep youth involvement high and in order to “make government transparent,” he said all American citizens must become civic teachers to the up and coming generations. The Campus Progress event concluded with the thought that Kat Barr began with, that regardless of future youth involvement, it must be said that in this election,”young people made the difference.”
The Obama-Biden campaign today announced a very confident and committed position in the presidential election. With several million volunteers around the country. the Obama-Biden campaign manager, David Plouffe, said “we like what we’re seeing in all the states with the early vote.”
Today the campaign released two 30 second TV ads in Arizona, North Dakota and Georgia. Plouffe said that even though the McCain-Palin campaign has criticized the Obama-Biden campaign about heavy advertising, “the McCain spending levels this week have been quite high. In the Tampa market, they’re spending over 5,000 points of television, which may be the most amount of television ever bought in a political race.”
Through advertising, voter contact, and resources, Plouffe said he feels the Obama-Biden campaign is doing everything they need to do in the swing-states. Plouffe also said the campaign is organizing polling information at popular locations that youths hang out at in the swing states.
Plouffe said that in the tossup state of Nevada, 43% of democrats voting early are new or sporadic. In North Carolina, 19% of democrats voting early never voted in an election before. In Florida, 1/4 of sporadic voting democrats have voted early. Plouffe said the campaign is putting special focus on voters who recently committed to Obama, because they’re known as “sticky” and still vulnerable to vote for McCain. Even though the campaign feels confident in their state of the race, Plouffe said this does not take away from “the fierce urgency of trying to win Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, Florida, and Ohio.”
Erica Williams of Campus Progress Action says that youth voters are voting based on the issues, especially college affordability (0:36).
Heather Smith, Executive Director of Rock the Vote, says that the organization has registered 2.54 million voters and expects at least 82% of them to vote in this election (0:41)
The youth vote is expected to play a significant role in this election, and according to Erica Williams of Campus Progress Action, they will vote down the ballot and with unique attention to the issues, especially college affordability.
“Young people are voting, and they are voting in record numbers, because of the issues they care about,” said Williams during a National Education Association conference call.
“We found out that since 2000 the cost of an average public college’s tuition and fees has risen over 58%. The average debt a college graduate faces can sometimes prevent 22% from attending any college at all, and 48% of college qualified high school graduates from attending a four year institution.”
The low youth turnout in previous elections has been partially attributed to difficulties in the registration process. To counter this, organizations like Rock the Vote have been holding massive voter registration drives.
“This year we’ve had over 2.54 million people download a voter registration form from our website…we’re injecting million of young voters into the political process, and if we look back to 2004, 82 of registered young people voted, and we expect to see at least those same rates again,” said Executive Director of Rock the Vote Heather Smith.
The youth vote is expected to play a role in state elections as well. Harris Parnell of the League of Youth Voters pointed to a California ballot initiative that would fund prisons at the expense of the education.
“California voters are going to have to vote on proposition 6, which basically puts more money from the California general fund into the prison system, which is happening at the same time the state has defunded the University of California system, so young voters are making a connection between the educational hardships they’re facing, and the state’s decision to direct resources elsewhere.
Smith says that the importance of the youth vote has been acknowledged by those running. “Candidates are paying attention to them, and you’re seeing everyone from senate candidates on down the ballot to the presidential [candidates], really for the first time in history, reaching out and asking young people for their votes.”
The Brookings Institution hosted the third seminar in a series on “Issues, Ideology, Gender and Race in the 2008 Election” featuring Sunshine Hillygus, Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University; Daron Shaw, Associate Professor of Government at University of Texas at Austin; and Shankar Vedantam, columnist for the Washington Post.
The panelists discussed specific factors pertaining to the 2008 Election such as; campaign tactics, youth involvement, the role of race, gender, ideology, character, and party identification. All three panelists agreed that voters participate in “proximity voting” whereby they determine their own vague ideas on an issue and gravitate towards the candidate that seems the most similar. In this way, they rationalize their own vote choice based on the comfort they feel from their candidate. The youth vote was a large
point of discussion due to the efficiency with which the Obama campaign has used first-time voters and the new millennial generation to his advantage.
The challenge they outlined for Senator McCain, who has fallen behind in recent polls particularly due to the economy, is for him to swing voters who “have a foot in each camp.” Those voters, such as pro-life Democrats, have a large decision to make and it will be up to both candidates to convince those voters that the issues that matter to them are the issues each respective candidate can support.
Elia Herman interviews Heather Smith, Executive Director of Rock the Vote. (7:15)
Heather Smith, Executive Director of Rock the Vote, discusses the youth vote.: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
