Campaigns Ignore Youth Vote’s Power

The latest edition of the Institute of Politics’ (IOP) twice-annual youth voter survey revealed that campaign managers across the country are not doing enough to target the youth vote—and are paying for their oversight with lost elections.

The survey, which polled campaign managers in some of the most competitive races across the country, found that they generally do not consider youth voter outreach to be a high priority—and that two-thirds did not even know what percentage of the electorate was accounted for by voters ages 18 to 24.

The results were presented as part of an IOP workshop conducted Friday. The presentation pointed to recent senate races in Virginia and Montana, where strong youth support carried the eventual winners to success. These elections were used to show that the engagement of young voters is a key to any successful campaign.

IOP Research Director David C. King said that some “good, rational reasons” for the treatment of the youth vote include the higher cost to mobilize each younger voter—three times what would be required for someone over 64—and the constant turnover of the youth demographic.

But IOP Director Jeanne Shaheen, warned, “Those who ignore the youth of the world do so at their own peril.”

IOP Polling Director John Della Volpe agreed. “If people don’t believe in the importance of the young vote, my advice would be to talk to Senator George Allen [of Virginia], or former Senator,” he said.

Max Anderson, a workshop panelist and current student at KSG and the Business School, spoke of the “open-source movement,” where campaigns enable individuals to independently endorse candidates through innovative technologies like Facebook, YouTube, and text messaging. Anderson said this will transform the 2008 campaigns.

Volpe said this shift will require strategists to “cede some control in order to create a relationship with young voters and let them persuade their friends and their peers in ways which they’re used to communicating.”

But the panelists stressed that delivering a younger generation to the polls is not as simple as creating a MySpace account.

“Technology opens up the door, but you need to have some sort of mechanism to transform it into on-the-ground action,” Volpe said. “Never, ever underestimate the importance of the candidate, the message.”

—Staff writer Brenda C. Maldonado can be reached at bmaldon@fas.harvard.edu.