Both Sen. Lindsey Graham and Gov. Tim Pawlenty yesterday voiced their concerns over the GOP’s less-than-adequate efforts building youth support. Graham explained:
“Demographically and with young people we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We’ll do well in 2010 but I’m worried about 20 years from now for us to do better—to be a party not a club—we’re going to have to adjust.”
But Republicans have a chance to win back young voters:
“The biggest loser for 18-to-34 year olds, is my opinion, the Obama agenda. They’re the ones that are going to have to pay for this massive government. They’re the ones that are going to lose choice in health care,” Graham said.
The youth vote happens to be an issue of which I am fairly knowledgeable. I wrote an award-winning thesis on the subject, and I’m familiar with the GOP’s failure to understand the importance of changing tactics. I strongly believe Republicans can win over many young voters. It is unlikely we can win a majority of 18-29 year-olds, but at least we won’t cede an entire demographic to Democrats.
My Thesis: “The Effects of Campaigns On Young Voter Turnout”
Campaigns in the past have only seen young people as two things: protesters and volunteers. We now need to acknowledge they are voters.
Based upon the survey research that I studied in my thesis, I believe there are three primary ways Republicans can build a vast youth coalition.
1. Issue salience is a factor that contributes to turnout for all voters. Based on the issue focus of an election, which is dependent upon ballot initiatives, as well as local, state, and federal elections, there is a strong variation in turnout. Issue salience also affects young people. Unfortunately, the issues that older voters care about are not the same for young voters. Elections that target issues that most affect the lives of young people see a rise in turnout from this constituency.
2. The effect of media upon young voters is different than that of older voters. There are clear indications that young people receive their political knowledge from non-traditional sources, such as comedy news shows and the Internet. While this is widely known, my research also found that the perception of media varies according to age. Specifically, what is known as the life-cycle effect, which is turnout peaking for middle-aged voters, can be negated by the tone of a campaign. Intent-to-vote, in comparing middle-aged voters to the young and old, is reduced to a statistically insignificant margin when campaign tone is perceived to be negative. In other words, middle-aged voters are demobilized and young and old are mobilized by negativity.
3. Probably the most important discovery of my research was the influence of GOTV on young people. Campaigns rarely use GOTV resources to target young people, but they are the most likely to respond to it. In my analysis of age cohorts, I found that some of these cohorts had as high as a 64.1% GOTV contact rate during the 2004 campaign, but young voters had a contact rate of about one-third of this. What is most surprising is that the young voters who were targeted were more likely to vote as a result of the contact. Turnout for young voters who are contacted by campaigns is between 17.3% and 27.2% higher than those who are not. Older voters in my research showed a maximum increase of 13.2% higher turnout resulting from contact, a substantial difference. A logistic regression comparing GOTV, past voting, education, and party identification shows that GOTV is by far the greatest factor in determining whether someone between the ages of 18 and 29 will vote.
While more young people have voted Democratic over the past several election cycles, Republicans should see hope in continued evidence that young people are very independent. They do not want to be identified with a particular party. Over the years that have seen young people backing Democratic candidates, we also see young voters’ party identification remaining stable. This insight is backed up by studies showing that most incoming college freshman consider themselves to be politically moderate. To be more accurate, 43% consider themselves moderate, 29% liberal, and 23% conservative. This is hardly a margin that cannot be overcome through educating students about conservative policies.
The key to all this is microtargeting students. Young people are congregated around college campuses. While we cannot easily contact them with direct mail and robocalls, that’s actually good because it’s not cost-effective anyway. By going door-to-door in these areas and working directly with student organizations, we can be very successful at getting out our message. We should be talking to college business clubs about tax policy, pre-med and medical school students about malpractice reform, and ROTC groups about national security. This is not microtargeting in the traditional sense, but it takes our message directly to the young people who are most likely to support Republicans.
If the GOP can implement some of these ideas, we will find we are not far behind Democrats on the youth vote.