Continued: Will youth reshape '08 presidential race?

In the early stages of the presidential campaign, one of the central story lines trumpeted the surprisingly large number of young people who were volunteering for campaigns, turning out at rallies and showing up at the caucuses.

In the words of Laura Guzman, a student from St. Olaf College in Northfield who spent much of January as a volunteer for Sen. Barack Obama, "For the first time in my lifetime, I feel that I have a place in the political system. ... I feel there is too much at stake not to care."

Sentiments like that, pundits breathlessly declared, meant that a surging youth vote could transform the 2008 election.

Increases in youth voting rates in the first contests of the year were huge, researcher Peter Levine said. "I think young people are ready to listen to the arguments about why they should vote." Voters younger than 30 turned out in Iowa at triple that age group's turnout in 2004, he said.

While 4 percent of voters younger than 30 caucused four years ago, 13 percent did so earlier this month. In New Hampshire, young voters turned out at more than double the rate of four years ago, with 43 percent voting compared with 18 percent in 2004.

"But [young voters are] not totally sold yet," added Levine, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), a research organization at the University of Maryland that tracks youth turnout. They "could easily turn off again, depending on the candidates we finally end up with."

A dry-eyed look at the turnout numbers suggests that the vaunted "youthquake" has yet to transform the political landscape.

In Iowa, the 13 percent of voters younger than 30 who turned out for the caucuses was well below the 17 percent rate of voters older than 30. In New Hampshire, the story was similar: The 43 percent of young voters who showed up were outpaced by the 55 percent of New Hampshire residents 30 and older who did so.

No comparable information is available about Michigan, but in last weekend's Democratic caucuses in Nevada, the turnout of Nevadans younger than 30 was half that of other voters.

Minnesota leads nation

Worries about the under-representation of young people in the political process is nothing new, having been widely bemoaned for decades. But in Minnesota, young voters emulate their elders in outpacing their counterparts across the nation in turnout.

Exit polls have consistently shown young voter turnout here has been higher than nationally. Four years ago, Minnesota led the nation, with an impressive 69 percent of its residents younger than 30 turning out to vote.

The Obama factor

At this still-early point in the 2008 campaign, it's not entirely clear how the youth vote will play out. A recent poll conducted by Harvard University's Institute of Politics found that 35 percent of adults younger than 25 call them Democrats, 25 percent say they're Republicans and 40 percent call themselves independents.

Results from primaries and caucuses in the leadoff states show that young people who vote Republican generally track the overall vote in the state.

But on the Democratic side, there's been a pronounced tilt toward Obama and away from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, giving him large majorities among young voters.

That pattern was on view in Michigan, where Clinton was the only major Democratic candidate on the ballot -- and "uncommitted" beat her by 5 percentage points among voters younger than 30.

This year wouldn't be the first time a youth-voter surge was prematurely exaggerated. A decade ago, in 1998, the youth vote was widely given credit for Jesse Ventura's improbable victory in Minnesota's governor's race, when it actually had more to do with new voters who weren't necessarily young.

While nearly half of voters younger than 30 cast their ballots for Ventura, they made up only 16 percent of the state's electorate -- a smaller share than they represented in the 2000 election.

"It's very difficult to get these people to vote," said Dean Barkley, who orchestrated Ventura's win. "They've got so many other things they're thinking about, and a lot of them don't think what's going on in politics has a direct impact on their lives."

The iPod generation

Alexander Cutler, a student from St. Olaf College in Northfield, disagrees vehemently. He was one of 20 St. Olaf students who spent this month in New Hampshire and South Carolina, volunteering for presidential campaigns as part of a political science class.

"Among those I've encountered during my time organizing young voters, it is very apparent there has been a cultural shift," Cutler wrote in an e-mail, describing a new political engagement among so-called "millennials," who are now just coming of age.

"For a long time ... apathy was seen as cool. Among millennials, it seems that nearly every person you talk to knows they should be voting. They are interested and engaged in the public sphere."

A 21st-century campaign

In his work for Obama's campaign, Cutler found it's been "extremely rare for a candidate and a campaign to take young voters as seriously as Senator Obama's campaign," which has tried to reach the young with traditional outreach methods while also "reaching out to young people via the same mediums they use to reach each other: Text messages, Facebook and MySpace are a few examples. He is truly running a 21st-century campaign to reach the 'iPod Generation.'"

Such social-networking tactics aren't lost on students working for other campaigns, said Nathan Swanson, a political science major from the University of Minnesota, Morris, who is helping to organize youth groups for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in the state.

"It's more than informal face-to-face interaction," he said. "You use things like Facebook to build a network."

'A social thing'

At 25, Meredith Salsbery is already an old pro, having worked on congressional, gubernatorial and presidential campaigns. Two years ago, she signed on to the long-shot First Congressional District campaign of Tim Walz, her former teacher -- and ended up as his press secretary.

Salsbery describes the task of getting young people engaged in politics as "a real problem, because you're ... competing with MTV, the iPhone, YouTube. So the first thing you need to do to get in the door is make it a social thing."

"After you've found a way to connect with young people, you have to convince them there's meaningful work for them to do," she said. "And you have to have an interesting candidate."

Cutler of St. Olaf says that for the more engaged millennials, getting them to the polls in a simple affair.

"All you need to do is ask them to vote, help them do so and they will."

Bob von Sternberg • 612-673-7184