Youth voters a force in '08 race

NEW YORK -- Young voters, who for decades played a marginal role in electoral politics, have emerged as a powerful new force in the 2008 elections and are poised to determine the next president as a result of an explosion in political activity among youth, according to pollsters, political organizers, and young voters themselves.

Spurred into action by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq, youths 18 to 24 years of age have dramatically accelerated their participation in politics, both at the ballot box and on college campuses. After a steady decline in youth voting since the close of the Vietnam War, young voter participation increased from 36 percent in 2000 to 47 percent in 2004, representing a huge jump. Analysts also project that the final statistics from 2006 will show it to be a record year for youth voting in a midterm con gressional election.

The Internet has accelerated the trend, giving young people a cheap and efficient tool to organize rallies, recruit volunteers, and exchange information about candidates. With passions high over the war, national security, and global warming, young people today are shaping up as a political power bloc that could exceed the influence of antiwar protesters in the late 1960s and early 1970s, pollsters and analysts predict.

Further, the current crop of young voters is trending more Democratic -- unlike the previous generation of youth -- giving the eventual Democratic nominee a key advantage in the general election, according to two independent surveys of young voters.

"We've got the potential for this to be like SDS on steroids," said John Della Volpe , director of polling at Harvard University's Institute of Politics, referring to the Vietnam-era Students for a Democratic Society.

In surveys and in interviews, young people said they were shocked out of complacency by the 9/11 attacks, which led the young in both major parties to worry anew about their own security as well as the role of the United States in the world arena. Since then, the war in Iraq has provoked an antiwar movement among youth, at the same time that a smaller portion of conservative young people is looking for a candidate who can defeat Al Qaeda elements in Iraq and eventually extricate the United States from the country.

In the 1980s and 1990s "we did go through a period of unrivaled prosperity" and no attack on US soil, said Ian Christie , a 19-year-old freshman Democrat at Fordham College. "People checked out. And we got selfish. I realize now that there's too much at stake around the world to check out."

Joe Hack , a 20-year-old government major at Georgetown University, said his vivid memory of 9/11 fueled his work with the College Republicans. "I'll never forget it -- driving with my father and seeing that black smoke," said Hack, who is from Bayonne, N.J. "That's why I'm passionate about prosecuting the war on terror."

Young people are driven by a strong moralistic streak -- not so much on conservative social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, but on matters such as poverty, climate change, and the genocide in Darfur, according to polling by the Institute of Politics, which has conducted an ongoing survey of young people since 2000. Both pollsters and young people interviewed by the Globe said that college students are also becoming more involved in volunteer work (the institute found that two-thirds of young people were doing some kind of community service) although the impetus for the activity was sometimes rooted in improving college applications.

In the Institute of Politics study, the major issue for young adults ages 18 to 24 of all political persuasions was Iraq and the war, followed by global warming -- which surprised some political organizers who thought young people would be more concerned about self-interests such as paying for college and getting jobs after graduation. Asked what foreign policy matters should occupy the next president, young voters listed the crisis in Darfur after stabilizing Iraq.

Even students and other young people who disagree about how to handle the war in Iraq speak about the conflict in moral terms, with antiwar activists bemoaning the deaths of both soldiers and Iraqi civilians and conservatives arguing that the United States cannot abandon Iraqis to a civil war.

And the young voters are irritated with what they see as partisan gamesmanship on world problems. Students in both parties said they often worked together on issues such as Darfur, and held heated but civil joint debates on matters such as Iraq. Republicans who do not want former vice president Al Gore to run for president nonetheless praised his view that the current generation needs to leave the environment habitable for their grandchildren.

Despite the venomous rhetoric on young people's favored form of communication -- the Internet -- young voters said they are most interested in finding a candidate who can unite the nation and get things done.

"These old people in politics, they let their own personal vendettas [out] against each other," said Michael Sanon , an 18-year-old Brooklyn high school student and registered Democrat who said he is undecided on a presidential candidate. "They have their own private wars going on, which is distracting from the issue at hand -- making the world a better place," said Sanon, who hopes to study law.

Josh Luger , a Columbia University junior who cochairs a student group supporting Rudolph Giuliani , a Republican and former New York mayor, for president, said he wants the next president to find a compromise on Iraq instead of bickering over whether to pull out or stay.

"I don't see this as a partisan issue. I see it as a problem to be solved," said Luger, 20.

Young voters favor Senator Barack Obama of Illinois among the Democratic contenders and Giuliani among the GOP candidates, according to the Institute of Politics survey. College supporters of both men cited a mutual desire to elect someone they said was not mired down in Washington politics and who could unite the country.

While the jump in young voters stands to have a big impact on both parties' primaries, Democrats are well positioned to benefit from the trend in the general election. Unlike the previous generation -- the voting patterns of which largely mirrored the electorate as a whole -- the current crop of young voters is increasingly Democratic, according to a survey of "Generation Next" by the Pew Research Center.

"This is the first time since the 1970s that young people have voted significantly differently than the rest of the country," favoring Democrats more heavily than the rest of the electorate, said Andrew Kohut , director of the nonpartisan Pew center. "I think it's the times. It's the war."

Pew's research found a similar increase between 2000 and 2004 in the participation of young voters, from 42 percent to 54 percent.

While final numbers have not been released, early data on spikes in regional voting indicate that young voters played a pivotal role in electing Democratic senators Jim Webb of Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana in 2006, victories that helped give Democrats control of the US Senate, Della Volpe said.

Both political organizers and the presidential campaigns have become more adept at getting young people involved, as well, Della Volpe and others said. In previous campaign cycles, it cost a campaign $3 to mobilize a young voter, compared with $1 per voter for an older citizens, according to David King, associate director of the Institute of Politics.

But the Internet, combined with savvier organizing techniques, has changed the dynamic. Instead of using the "Rock the Vote" model -- a campaign to make voting hip -- organizers realized they needed peer-to-peer efforts to engage young people by door-to-door canvassing, Internet outreach, and phone banks.

"You can't expect to have MTV throw rock concerts and have candidates put on a T-shirt and talk about what underwear they wear, that would get young people to vote," said Jane Fleming Kleeb , executive director of the Young Voter PAC, referring to an event when a young voter asked President Clinton if he wore boxers or briefs.

Advocates for young voters are also reaching out to their constituents who are not on college campuses, using the Internet to connect young people at community centers and other noncampus venues. The nonpartisan group Generation Engage has launched an elaborate campaign of "I-chats," in which political leaders across the political spectrum hold Internet video meetings and answer questions from participants in cities across the country.

The group's website offers other videos as well, drawing 70,000 hits a day, said Adrian Talbott , cofounder of Generation Engage. "Young people -- especially those without college experience -- do not suffer from a lack of interest. They suffer from a lack of access," he said, which the group is seeking to fill through its virtual town meetings.

Students especially are difficult to reach through traditional direct mail and computer-generated robo calls, said Chris Brooks, a George Washington University junior who organizes College Republicans events through Facebook and other online sites. "The Internet is the only way of getting in touch with college students these days," he said.

A majority of young people don't even bother with phone lines, the Pew Center and the Institute of Politics found, preferring cellphones and e-mail.

Students have sometimes been ahead of the campaigns on Internet organizing -- a student group for Obama started on Facebook -- but campaigns are following, recruiting young people to their campaign staffs to reach the critical demographic, said Jessy Tolkan of the Energy Action Coalition, which has chapters on 500 campuses.

This election cycle, young voters said, they intend to make their voices heard. "The role for young people is to be the truth-tellers" on issues such as global warming and the war, said Nathan Wyeth , a Brown University junior active in energy issues. "It's young people who are going to be inheriting the consequences."