March 10, 2008

Mississippi: A Great Young Voter State Triples

Posted by Sarah Burris at 12:14AM

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UPDATE: According to CIRCLE's numbers crunched from the exit polling data last night, young voters in Mississippi came out in outstanding numbers proving once again that if you build it, they will come.

After unprecedented outreach on behalf of both campaigns who held several rallies and townhall meetings at colleges and universities in the week leading up to the Mississippi Primary, 14 percent of eligible Mississippi citizens under the age of 30 participated. That is nearly half of those that turned out in the 2000 Primary election.

Its hard to get people out to the polls in an election, its even harder to get them out during a primary, but these numbers are encouraging for organizers on both sides of the isle. "More than 13,000 young people participated in the Republican primary and 57,000 in the Democratic primary" according to CIRCLE.

Many reports speculate that taking Sen. Barack Obama out of the mix will deflate the youth vote, and clearly these numbers prove otherwise. The outstanding work by the Clinton and the Obama campaigns paying particular attention to young voters is what garners results. If you ask young voters to participate they will. Both campaigns did and the results were overwhelming.

Mississippi is awesome! According to CIRCLE's Quick Facts on Mississippi (pdf) "52 percent of voters ages 18 to 29 voted in the 2004 presidential election, ranking Mississippi 17th nationally in young voter turnout." They were also seven points higher than they were in 2000.

In 2006 there were an estimated 440,000 young people in Mississippi compared to the 1.6million people over 30. That's 27.5 percent of the population, making young people particularly important to the state and to this upcoming election.

"I've been posting signs and pounding posts for a lot of years for political candidates," Gautier resident [and Barack Obama supporter] Sylvanious Brown said.

But this year, Brown says he's seeing more young faces on the campaign trail than ever before.

"In the past 20 or even 30 years, when you have an election and you have only 35 or 40 percent showing up at the polls, that's not saying very much of the electorate. But hopefully this is the start of something new," Brown told WLOX-TV.

Chelsea Clinton spent Sunday campaigning for Sen. Clinton in the state including a stop at Millsaps College for an "Our Voices, Our Future" lecture followed by a Young Professional Event at Sal and Mookies restaurant. She plans to spend tomorrow at Ole Miss. Millsaps marked her 63rd campaign appearance at a college, where she held an hour-long question-and-answer session with about 300 people, according to USA Today.

After winning Wyoming's Saturday Caucus with 61 percent of the vote to Clinton's 38 percent, Sen. Barack Obama plans to spend Monday in Columbus and Jackson State University in Jackson for a "Stand for Change" rally that will be at the school's Lee E. Williams athletic center.

According to a Rasmussen Report released Saturday, Obama holds the lead with 53 percent and Clinton with 39 percent among likely voters, but the Obama campaign has said it plans to campaign as if they are close. As in previous states Clinton wins among seniors and Obama wins substantially with young voters and African American voters.

As the official nominee for the Republican Party, Sen. John McCain is spending the next few weeks raising money, napping, and going on the late-night circuit to make jokes about old people.