Cross posted from Future Majority.

Well my pre-game analysis was off.  Banking on a smaller youth electorate and possible voter suppression at the polls, I predicted that Indiana would have a smaller youth turnout than North Carolina and that Clinton could potentially overtake Obama among some segments of the youth vote.  That turned out to be false.

Kossacks Under 35 is a weekly diary series designed to create a community within DailyKos that focuses on young people. Our overall goals are to work on increasing young voters' Democratic majority, and to raise awareness about issues that particularly affect young people, with a potential eye to policy solutions. Kossacks of all ages are welcome to participate (and do!), but the overall framework of each diary will likely be on or from a younger person's perspective. If you would like more information or want to contribute a diary, please email kath25 at kossacksunder35 (at) gmail dot com

Cross-posted from Future Majority.

CIRCLE has crunched what numbers they could and here are the results from yesterday's primary:

There are a boatload of caveats that come with these stats.

Cross posted at Future Majority.

Since I've been traveling so much, I've taken the opportunity afforded by long plane flights to revitalize my reading habits.  So far I've read and reviewed Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody, and David Kinnaman's UnChristian.  I've been enjoying this chance to read again.  It's a good habit that unfortunately dropped well below previous levels as I worked on my book and struggled to juggle a full-time job and blogging.  I've been able to do a new book every 12 - 15 days, and hope to keep that  up through the spring and summer (no promises once the Fall gets here and the campaign really kicks into high-gear).

Cross posted from future Majority.

Yesterday in USA Today, Republican operative David Frum published an Op-Ed acknowledging the Republican Party's huge loss of support from young voters, and outlining a four-point plan to recapture the youth vote and revive the days of Reagan and Bush Sr.

Frum gets a few things right.  Millennials are the most anti-Republican age group in the electorate, that position is a response to the failures of the Bush Administration to adequately address any number of social, economic, and geopolitical problems, the dominance of Christian conservatives and their culture war values on choice and GLBT rights also plays a part, as does the fact that the Millennial generation is the most diverse, tolerant generation in history and the Republican Party is not at all diverse or tolerant.

But Frum is smoking something if he thinks his four-point plan can turn things around for the GOP.

Cross Posted from Future Majority

I finally finished reading UnChristian: What a New Generation Thinks About Christianity . . . And Why It matters.   It was a difficult read.  In the past I’ve reported on the exodus of young evangelicals away from Bush and the Republican Party, and the shift in focus of young evangelicals from culture war topics like abortion and gay marriage, and towards more community and social justice oriented work on issues of poverty and climate change.  I picked up the book hoping for a glimpse into how young people are changing the church along these lines.  These issues were only addressed tangentially in the book.

Instead, I got a full-throated defense of the most rigid interpretations of Evangelical Christianity and a market research-based attempt to rebrand Christianity among the general US populace, with a strong focus on capturing Millennials and Gen Xers (what the authors calls "mosaics" and "busters’).  

Fellow Kossacks,

I'm excited to announce that after more than a year's work, my book, Youth to Power: How Today's Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow's Progressive Majority, is finally published.

A huge thank you to my publishers, Ig Publishing (a wonderful independent outfit that also published fellow-Kossack and blogger Jeffrey Feldman's books), and all the youth vote activists and researchers  who agreed to be interviewed and helped me along the way.  After the jump I'll let you know why I wrote this book, and what it's all about.

And if you are in New York City, come by the launch party tonight at the Tank (279 Church St.).  Open bar from 8 - 10.  

Fellow Kossacks,

I'm excited to announce that after more than a year's work, my book, Youth to Power: How Today's Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow's Progressive Majority, is finally published.

A huge thank you to my publishers, Ig Publishing (a wonderful independent outfit that also published fellow-Kossack and blogger Jeffrey Feldman's books), and all the youth vote activists and researchers  who agreed to be interviewed and helped me along the way.  After the jump I'll let you know why I wrote this book, and what it's all about.  

Cross posted from Future Majority.

Yesterday Rock the vote released the first comprehensive polling of young voters since Super Tuesday.  There's nothing hugely shocking about the results if you have been following the youth vote, but the results are certainly worth noting as they provide further confirmation to what many youth advocates have been saying for a long time now.

You can view their power point, or thumb through the toplines and crosstabs for yourself, on their website (pdf).  The poll was via landline and cellphone with 668 18 - 29 year olds.  Latinos and African Americans were oversampled.   The margin of error is +/- 4.4%

Cross posted from Future Majority.

The final results from the Wisconsin primary are in, and CIRCLE is done crunching the data.  Once again the story is the same - youth turnout in the Democratic Primary almost doubled, increasing from 91,120 in 2004 to 175,841 in yesterday's contest.  Young voters were 16 percent of the Democratic electorate, up from 11 percent in 2004.  The overall turnout rate for young voters (Republican and Democrats) was 25 percent, 11 points lower than the overall turnout rate of 36 percent.

I'm just sitting down to look at the results of today's primary and caucuses.  Obama is the Democratic winner in all three states today.  When it comes to the youth vote, it looks like there are no exit/entrance polls from either Washington or Nebraska, meaning that it won't be possible (for me at least) to determine what happened in any quantifiable way.

Louisiana does have exit polling, and here's what it looks like.  

Note that these are subject to change as CNN updates their polling.  I'll double check all the numbers tomorrow afternoon and repost on Future Majority:

Cross posted from Future Majority.

The final numbers for the youth vote on Super Tuesday are in.  

First, take a look at what turnout thus far tells us about the Democratic advantage among young voters.  The data for 2000, 2004, and 2006 come from CNN exit polls.  The data for 2008 is an projection of the Democratic advantage among young voters in November of 2008.  The projection was determined by adding up the total number of young voters participating in the Democratic and Republican primaries thus far (Super Tuesday and previous contests all the way back to Iowa), and calculating the percent of the total number of voters that participated in the Democratic and Republican contests respectively.

As you can see, the Democratic advantage among young voters is huge and growing.

Cross posted from Future Majority.

After putting out the question of Hillary's youth "victory" to a number of smart youth organizers, I'm getting a better picture of what I think happened in the state and how to interpret Florida youth turnout.  First the final numbers from CIRCLE (pdf):

Cross posted from Future Majority.

Looking to get involved in progressive youth organizing?  

I got a lot of emails from folks looking for job candidates, pimping conferences, and scouring or interns.  It seemed to make sense for me to put out a call and compile as much as I could into on place.  So here's a fairly comprehensive listing of all the jobs, internships, and conferences that can help you do it.

I hope folks find this valuable.  Also, I'm pretty appalled that there is no central repository for stuff like this.  There are places to go, sure - NOI's job boards, Idealist.org, Democratic GAIN, etc.  but all of those seem somewhat incomplete and are hard to navigate.  Building a real "youth movement job board" isn't at all a bad idea and it could probably be done super cheap if it was all done wiki style.

Cross posted from Future Majority

In yesterday's New Hampshire primary, turnout among young voters doubled over 2004 levels.  With almost all precincts reporting in, an analysis by CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (pdf), showed that turnout among voters under 30 hit a high of 37%, up from 18% in 2004.  In total, CIRCLE estimated that 72,041 young people made it to the ballot box on Tuesday, making up 16% of the total electorate.  This continued a trend of rising participation among young voters begun in 2004, when youth turnout in the general election rose by 4.3 million votes over 2000 levels.  These numbers are initial estimates, and actual turnout numbers are likely to rise as the final precincts report their results.

Cross posted from Future Majority

In the wake of her loss to Barack Obama in Iowa, and defeat among younger voters by a margin of more than 5-1, Hillary Clinton changed her strategy and started to reach out to younger voters.  The day after the primary, Clinton was quoted as saying "I'm running for president to reclaim the future — the future for all of us, of all ages, but particularly for young Americans."

Apparently, not all of her campaign surrogates are on the same page.  Sacha Millstone, a member of the Clinton National Finance Committee and keeper of a large Clinton fundraising list, sent an email to her network earlier today in which she trashed young voters and cast doubts on the legitimacy of the Iowa caucus - in large part because of the overwhelming level of student attendance.

(From the diaries - georgia10)

Barack Obama may be riding the momentum of a caucus win into New Hampshire, but the real winner in tonight's Iowa caucus was young voters.

It's been a long and rocky road for young voters - in the media and in the party -  For four years, the media has declared (incorrectly) that young voters were the downfall of Howard Dean, whose over-reliance on an "unreliable demographic" ushered in his defeat in the 2004 caucus.  This, despite the fact that youth turnout at the caucus increased that year.  For the last year, we've heard how Obama's strategy was foolhardy, and even from the campaign we heard that the youth vote would be "icing on the cake."

It turns out, it was the cake.

According to estimates by CIRCLE (pdf) youth vote turnout at the caucus tripled tonight, rising from 4% to 11%.  Within the Democratic caucus, over 46,000 young people participated, and young voters comprised 22% of all  caucus-goers.   According to entrance polls by CNN, 57% of those 17-29 year old caucus goers stood up to caucus for Barack Obama.  Tonight, they drove his campaign to victory.

The numbers themselves were larger than expected, especially considering the early caucus date during winter break for most colleges. But no one who has been paying attention to young voters in the past four years should be surprised that young Iowans played such a significant role in tonight's caucus.  These are not isolated incidents.  In 2004, youth participation in the Iowa Caucus quadrupled.  In the 2004 general election, youth turnout saw the largest increase in over a decade.  Turnout was also up in 2006 (pdf).  Tonight's caucus turnout was part of a four year trend in young voter turnout.

Tonight was also a victory for the Democratic Party.  Participation in the caucus almost doubled.  212,000 Democratic voters turned out compared to 125,000 in 2004.  About 46,000 of those caucus-goers were young voters.  Compare that to the Republicans: CIRCLE (pdf) reports that only 10,000 young people participated in the Republican caucus, just 10% of all Republican caucus-goers.  This too is a trend.  In 2004, young voters broke in favor of John Kerry over President Bush 54 - 45%.  In 2006, young voters chose Democratic candidates 60% - 38%, increasing a growing trend towards favoring progressive candidates.  

Young voters are increasingly moving in the direction of Democrats, and tonight, the Obama campaign - thanks to a savvy youth operation that reached out on Facebook and MySpace, at high schools and on college campuses - was able to capitalize on that to attain victory.  His win confirms what many have been saying for years now: young people will vote if you pay attention to the, speak to their issues, and reach out.  New technologies can certainly help make that initial connection, yet it's still good old fashioned face to face politicking - peer to peer organizing - that makes the difference.  Years ago, when young people began voting Republican during the Reagan Era, Democrats stopped asking young voters to participate.  Tonight's victory shows what individual candidates, and the Democratic Party stand to gain by courting today's young voters.  

Tonight we saw the the core of a future progressive majority make its presence known in Democratic politics.  Young Voters are not a hidden vote or icing on the cake, and after tonight, everyone knows it.

Update: Someone just reminded me that tomorrow is the Democratic Debate sponsored by the Des Moines Register, David Yepsen's paper.  I'd encourage all candidates to make strong pro-student statements at that debate.

Here's the deal - David Yepsen and over half the Democratic Presidential campaigns have questioned the rights of Iowa students not originally from the state to participate in the caucus.  Some campaigns have retracted  their statements, the youth vote community has been organizing around this issue, and now the mainstream media is finally starting to take it up.  You can read previous reporting on this issue (chronologically) here, here, here, and here.