Will the youth vote for Obama?

Today a Reuter's headline reads, "Obama 'Counting' on young voters in New Hampshire," citing a poll that shows young Democratic voters prefer Obama. (As a side note, young Republicans prefer Giuliani.) The article goes on to say that the power of youths is "growing." There are multiple factors that may be influencing young Democrats to vote for Obama over Hillary:

• Obama, at age 45, is the youngest candidate and may be easier to identify with.
• Obama's strong anti-war focus may be attractive to younger voters, whom are more anti-war and anti-Bush than the public at large.
• Older voters may more clearly remember the economic success of Bill Clinton's Presidency, while younger voters (such as myself) have only been paying attention for a few election cycles.
• The innovative and internet savvy campaign that Obama is running attacts young voters.
• Obama's charisma may be more imporant to younger voters.
• The argument that "Obama lacks experience," may ring hollow for young voters who feel that in their own lives, they hear that phrase too often and it rings hollow.

Unfortunately, no matter which of these factors is playing into Obama's support, relying on younger voters to turn out is historically speaking a terrible strategy. In 1972, McGovern called young voters his "secret weapon." They turned out at remarkably low levels and half of them voted for Nixon. In the 2004 Democratic primary, Howard Dean did almost the exact same strategy as Obama, running a web-savvy campaign and courting youth voters who didn't show up. In the 2004 general election, an amazing amount of money and attention was spent on youth mobilization. A great report on the youth vote helped me get some detailed information on what happened in that election. Among voters under 30, Kerry won by nine points, and among those under 25, Kerry won by thirteen points. (Sadly, this was the only age group that Kerry won.) Despite the fact that youth turnout was up, nearly every other group was up in 2004 as well. So basically, the 2004 election featured more attention on the youth (remember Kerry claiming Bush was going to revive the draft?) but they ended up representing the same small percentage of the electorate that they always do.

The "Youth Vote" strategy actually has more pitfalls for Obama than its historical track record. Consider:

• Minorities represented the more liberal youth voters in 2004. Among young white Americans, Bush lead by 9 percent. Iowa and New Hampshire are 97% white.
• Not only are young, white voters more likely to be Republicans (and therefore not vote for Obama in the primary), they aren't likely to vote, period. A huge percent of the 2004 youth vote increase came from Democratic-leaning minorities.
• In 2006, Democrats won the young vote by 18 percent. But considering that they won it by nine percent in 2004, a nine point swing for the Democrats mirrors the rest of the country almost exactly (as Democrats won among all voters by 7 percent in 2006, compared to losing by 3 percent in 2004) . So young voters aren't becoming more Democratic faster than any other block. And again, a large chunk of that gain was from minorities, particularly Hispanics, which aren't represented in Iowa or New Hampshire.

This doesn't mean Obama shouldn't focus on the youth vote at all. He does have some advantages:

• Obama's internet organization is far superior to Howard Dean's, and the internet has greatly expanded as a tool for activism. (Although the internet is split between Obama and Edwards right n0w).
• Obama's charisma and crowd drawing abilities may helpd him get more voters to show up than other less inspiring candidates like Kerry and Gore
• If Obama is able to moblize young voters, he may catch opponents by surprise. Typically, young voters are factored out of "likely voter" surveys because of their historical record of not showing up.

So what have we learned?

• While Obama should continue to court the youth vote, "Counting on them," is not a good idea in Iowa and New Hampshire. The data suggests he needs to have a plan B of some kind.
• The "news" doesn't do research. If they had bothered to spend 20 minutes with a search engine, they never would have said that "the power of youths is growing." Their power stayed the same in 2000, 2004, and 2006. It has stayed at the same low level it's always been.