The youth are a huge demographic in the elections this year, and the candidates are aware of this. All the candidates are reaching out to the youth, trying hard to rally their vote. Even in mid-March, "more than 5.7 million voters under the age of 30 [had] participated in the primaries and caucuses held thus far. That's a 109 percent increase from the last set of presidential primaries, according to Rock the Vote," and I'm sure the numbers have increased since then ("Young Voters Could Put Obama or Clinton in the White House"). The youth are voting in huge numbers this year, and the youth can really make a difference in the election.
Hillary Clinton tried to mobilize youth by setting up a "feature on [the campaign's] web site that allows Facebook users to ask her questions." Clinton also stated that "we should even have a government blogging team where people in the agencies are constantly telling all of you...everything that's going on so that you have up-to-the-minute information about what your government is doing" ("Clinton Chasing Youth Vote: 'We Should Have a Government Blogging Team!' ")
However, Barack Obama seems to be more successful in bringing in the youth vote. Compared to Clinton, "Obama has captured more than 50 percent of the vote of 18-to-29-year-olds in nearly every primary contest to date," according to Cora Currier's "Obama's Youth Movement." How is Obama doing this? Obama's "organization on campuses is excellent, and he has tapped successfully into the power of social networking sites and the viral messaging of YouTube" (Currier). At South Carolina State University, Obama even had big-name celebrities help him. Usher, Kerry Washington, and Chris Tucker helped him to recruit for the primaries ("Usher Brings Obama a Little Love").
On the Republican side, John McCain is also, to the surprise of some, getting some votes of the youth. McCain "won the youth vote in more states than any other GOP contender on Super Tuesday" and he is also "perceived by voters and the media to be a maverick with good credentials on some top youth issues" (Michael Connery's blog (he's the guy from the IMPACT conference!)). At the MTV/ MySpace candidate dialogue, "he knocked it out of the park and actually gained ground among the young voters watching and participating in the debate" (Michael Connery). Also, I had no idea about this and this is really cool, but Connery mentions that McCain has "made high profile appearances in hit movies like the Wedding Crashers, hit TV shows like 24, and he's been on the Daily Show more times than [he] can count."
All of the candidates are targeting the youth in some way, and we'll watch as the youth turnout hopefully increases.
~Sarah
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
And, we're seniors.
This has been a really busy semester for Team Vote-CP. There's just been so much going on that the time just literally flew by. So here's a few updates on what's been going on for us:
In March, we attended the IMPACT conference, held at Northeastern University. It's a conference on student service, advocacy, and social action, and (in my opinion), it was an extremely rewarding experience. While the main focus of our research is centered around the University of Maryland, one of our goals is to assess how well our research would apply to other schools or in other places around the country. The conference gave us a great chance to talk to people from different backgrounds who were interested in our topic and see what is going on at other schools, as well as to find out whether the attitudes we discovered from our focus groups were farther-reaching. We learned a lot about methods that other people are using to reach out to youth voters. But more importantly, we learned a couple of key points that consistently get voters out and keep them interested. The first thing was the importance of peer-to-peer contact: approaching someone in person is much more effective than electronic or mechanized outreach (like form emails or pre-recorded phone messages). Also, in order to keep youth participation up, it is important that we, as a society, make civic engagement a part of everyday life once again, rather than letting it continue to be something that comes up once every few years. Overall, the focus that we gained was on sustainable engagement--making sure that whatever we do, it does more than just work now, it keeps working in the future.
After we came back from the conference, we got word back from the IRB: our survey had been approved for distribution. Yay us! So we uploaded our survey on surveymonkey.com, and for the months of April and May we sent out the link to everyone we could, asking that they take the survey. We also got paper copies printed and distributed those in classes and outside the dining hall on campus. All in all, we got almost 1000 surveys filled out. A couple of weeks ago, we sat down as a team and looked at the results and found two major trends. First, students want easier access to information on the candidates. This, we anticipated, for the most part. The other trend we saw kind of surprised me. Over 70% of the students we surveyed told us they were registered to vote at their home address. In retrospect, this makes sense, since most people I know registered in their high schools in assemblies and the like. But the reason this surprised me is because sooooo many GOTV efforts I've seen since getting to UMD have focused on re-registering voters at their College Park addresses. Anyway, based on this we developed our tactic for next semester!
Now, as finals have come to an end and everyone's moving home for the summer or getting into the groove of their internships, we've got a couple of (super-important) things to get done. First, we've gotta work the kinks out of the tactic we're planning on. Also, we're applying for additionally funding so we can actually implement the tactic. Third, we've got to re-apply to everyone's favorite, IRB, to make sure we can actually do the research.
Anyway, that's the update on this semester. We're all hyper-excited for the fall, when the really FUN part of our experiment happens. See you then for more updates!
In March, we attended the IMPACT conference, held at Northeastern University. It's a conference on student service, advocacy, and social action, and (in my opinion), it was an extremely rewarding experience. While the main focus of our research is centered around the University of Maryland, one of our goals is to assess how well our research would apply to other schools or in other places around the country. The conference gave us a great chance to talk to people from different backgrounds who were interested in our topic and see what is going on at other schools, as well as to find out whether the attitudes we discovered from our focus groups were farther-reaching. We learned a lot about methods that other people are using to reach out to youth voters. But more importantly, we learned a couple of key points that consistently get voters out and keep them interested. The first thing was the importance of peer-to-peer contact: approaching someone in person is much more effective than electronic or mechanized outreach (like form emails or pre-recorded phone messages). Also, in order to keep youth participation up, it is important that we, as a society, make civic engagement a part of everyday life once again, rather than letting it continue to be something that comes up once every few years. Overall, the focus that we gained was on sustainable engagement--making sure that whatever we do, it does more than just work now, it keeps working in the future.
After we came back from the conference, we got word back from the IRB: our survey had been approved for distribution. Yay us! So we uploaded our survey on surveymonkey.com, and for the months of April and May we sent out the link to everyone we could, asking that they take the survey. We also got paper copies printed and distributed those in classes and outside the dining hall on campus. All in all, we got almost 1000 surveys filled out. A couple of weeks ago, we sat down as a team and looked at the results and found two major trends. First, students want easier access to information on the candidates. This, we anticipated, for the most part. The other trend we saw kind of surprised me. Over 70% of the students we surveyed told us they were registered to vote at their home address. In retrospect, this makes sense, since most people I know registered in their high schools in assemblies and the like. But the reason this surprised me is because sooooo many GOTV efforts I've seen since getting to UMD have focused on re-registering voters at their College Park addresses. Anyway, based on this we developed our tactic for next semester!
Now, as finals have come to an end and everyone's moving home for the summer or getting into the groove of their internships, we've got a couple of (super-important) things to get done. First, we've gotta work the kinks out of the tactic we're planning on. Also, we're applying for additionally funding so we can actually implement the tactic. Third, we've got to re-apply to everyone's favorite, IRB, to make sure we can actually do the research.
Anyway, that's the update on this semester. We're all hyper-excited for the fall, when the really FUN part of our experiment happens. See you then for more updates!
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Update on the 2008 Election Campaign!
Today is a big day for the Democratic candidates with the largest remaining primaries held in
The candidates have been splitting their time campaigning in both states. Clinton said that "this election is about jobs, jobs, jobs" and "championed her proposal to suspend the federal gas tax for the summer" according to "Two Candidates, Two States and One Big Day" in the Washington Post. Bill Clinton has also been helping his wife campaign. He has been traveling to the small towns and rural areas where people would never expect him to go to where people “love him just for coming” (In Small Towns, Bill Clinton Finds A Campaign Niche, Washington Post).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)