Chasing the Youth Vote

Clockwise from top left: Presidential hopefuls Gephardt, Dean, Lieberman, and Kerry.

On the third floor of the anonymous office park housing Howard Dean's campaign headquarters in Burlington, Vermont, an earnest literature and history major from Alabama greets visitors in bare feet. Nearby, a 17-year-old from Connecticut chats with potential high school supporters on the telephone. An Amherst student steps off the elevator in hiking boots showing signs of a recent hike and disappears into rows of cubicles. This is the hub of "Generation Dean," a network of teenage and 20-something Dean supporters the campaign is relying on to reach young voters.

Conventional wisdom expects little political participation from the Nintendo Generation, known to demographers as the "New Millenials." Voter turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds has steadily declined from 50 percent in 1972 to 32 percent in the last presidential election [i]. Yet census figures and studies show this age group to be rapidly challenging the Baby Boomers in size [ii], and the Harvard Institute of Politics (IOP) recently released a study suggesting Millennials could replace soccer moms as the swing vote in the 2004 presidential race. 60 percent of the students IOP surveyed planned to vote in the upcoming election.

But how seriously are the Democratic presidential candidates taking Millenials? We found the answer to be as expected: not very. Youth outreach efforts were routine and shallow. As evidence of being hip to youth, John Kerry's campaign pointed to the endorsement of electronic musician Moby (who likes Dean but thinks Kerry is more elect-able). Jano Cabrera, the 29-year-old spokesperson for the Joseph Lieberman campaign, made the usual noises on the subject. "People often say that the life blood of politics is youth," he said. "Never is this more true than on a presidential campaign."

In a literal sense, Cabrera is right. Campaigns rely on the labor of unpaid interns to man telephones, canvass neighborhoods, and stamp envelopes. Every campaign office we visited looked like a student union building, but instances of these young armies canvassing voters their own age were selective and few.

		Youth outreach efforts were routine and shallow... A possible exception in this election is the Generation Dean venture.

A possible exception in this election is the Generation Dean venture. Ginny Hunt and Michael Whitney, the project's young coordinators, said over 250 college chapters have been founded in every state except Nevada, and estimates of student "contacts" with the Dean campaign -- from chapter heads to donors -- is upwards of 4,000.

No other campaign we spoke with had such concrete information on the response to their outreach programs, and was only able to assure us that such programs were actually in place. Kerry has a few chapters in Massachusetts left over from his last bid for senator, and a fall semester speaker tour featuring his son is in the works. And even though Dennis Kucinich said to us, "the spirit of my campaign connects with the spirit of young people -- my efforts for peace and protecting the environment show that I'm in tune with organizing on campuses," there is no evidence that any campus organizers are in tune with him.

So why the attention from cell-phone toting teenagers in a governor from a small state full of dairy farms and hippies? It's quite simple. "No one talked to them before," said Whitney, a student at American University. Dean's self-described persona as the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" resonated in the minds of many young voters we met as more truthful. "The real power to change this country is in your hands, not mine," Dean said at a recent rally in New Hampshire.

Whitney and Hunt were initially surprised as the response to Dean's message from their target audience "took off." They have even solicited significant campaign donations from young voters, though at the time of writing exact figures were still being calculated.