There's universal agreement that the youth vote is critical to the outcome of the 2008 election, but how engaged are Millennials? Engagement is a tricky thing to measure, but just released data (9.23.08) from Pew Research sheds some light. First, the table shows a strong trend among 18-24 year olds for going 'newsless'; 34% say they watch no news on a daily basis, up from 25% in 1998. (Presumably news on the Comedy Channel doesn't count as 'news', although I'm not sure.) While over 9 out of 10 18-29 year olds say they intend to vote, only 7 out of 10 say they 'definitely plan to vote' and less than two thirds say they voted in their precinct last time they had a chance, and only 4 out of 10 say they 'always' vote. These figures are even lower for 'cell phone only' respondents.
Given these figures, it's clear why the candidates are focusing on social media to engage young voters. Obama is doing far better than McCain, but the gap is closing. According to Hitwise, Obama gets about 56% of the total candidate web site traffic. As of Sept. 9, Obama boasted 510,799 MySpace friends, compared with McCain's 87,652 friends, a more than 5-to-1 lead in number of friends, but down from a 7-to-1 advantage in August according to Live Research. Obama also has a sizeable leads on Facebook with 1,726,453 supporters to McCain's 309,591. Obama's Web site has twice as many videos posted to his official YouTube channel and far more YouTube channel subscribers, by an 11-to-1 margin. But what is surprising to me, is that these figures aren't higher, given the penetration of these media among young people.
The Stanford Daily, in an article yesterday titled "Just How Political Is This Place?", quotes Evan Purcell '09 as saying "it's diffcult to stay informed; politics isn't a big social presence here." My daughter at Notre Dame reported the same lack of interest when I asked how students were responding to the Palin pick. "Mom, we're in a bubble." While I am sure some campuses, like George Washington University in DC, are more passionate about politics, neither candidate should overestimate the 'engagement' of today's young voters in the election -- at least for now.
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Most of your post is flawed.
ReplyDelete-- It seems like you're viewing seven out of ten 18-29 year olds saying they intend to vote as a bad thing. The youth vote's highest mark came in 1972, the first year 18 year olds were allowed to vote. That year, 55% of citizens 18-29 years old voted. Since then, the numbers have dropped to a low in 1996 around 40% (minus 1992 when the numbers spiked). So 7 out of 10 young people intending to vote is actually good.
-- Obama's gap with McCain is only closing because it took McCain's campaign so long to figure out what social media was. Further, one could make the argument that Obama's supporters are simply more committed to his campaign and have been following him throughout the long primary race.
-- If political engagement among Millennials is restricted to campuses like GWU in DC, how can this be explained?
Some 6.5 million voters under 30 voted in this year's primaries and caucuses, according to data compiled by CIRCLE. That's a record figure, said CIRCLE director Peter Levine, and the first time the youth vote has risen in three consecutive election cycles (2004, 2006 and 2008) since the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971. CIRCLE's data shows that the overall national youth voter turnout rate almost doubled in eight years; it was 9 percent in 2000 and grew to 17 percent this year. In addition, of the 17 states in which primary exit polls were conducted in both 2000 and 2008, 16 saw increases in youth voter turnout, with some states showing a triple or quadruple jump. In the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, for example, the youth vote comprised 18 and 16 percent, respectively, of the total share of voters.
"This primary season the Millennials have gone to the polls in record numbers, showing they are an influential voting bloc in American politics," said Levine. "They realize what's at stake and the impact this election will have on their future and the
future of our country."
"All key indicators and trends point to a predicted record turnout of young people voting this coming November," he continued.