September 19, 2008

Where's the Love?

Posted by Mattie Weiss at 4:16PM

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(This post originally appeared on Campus Camp Wellstone)

On Monday, Newsweek released a poll showing Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama in a dead heat. 

But not among my generation.

With young voters, it's not even close. The largest gap in support by age group is among 18-39 year olds, with an astounding 27 percent lead for Obama. Compare that to the next largest age-based advantage -- 10 percent for McCain among 40 - 59 year olds.

In additional to this latest poll, numbers indicate that 6.5 million people under 30 voted in this year's primaries and caucuses, and the overall youth vote has risen from 9 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2008.

These figures prove that young people will be a deciding factor in this election, and in particular, for progressive change. So where is the love?

While the campaigns spend money and time talking to swing voters and "hockey moms", we see very little attention paid to our issues and our organizing strategies. While money is poured into attack ads, there are major opportunities being missed to mobilize huge numbers of young people who will come out in droves for progressive candidates if, as research shows, we are able to have face-to-face conversations with them about how elections relate to their lives, and about how to navigate the voting process.

Ever since organizations that target youth and students began putting their voter mobilization plans together last spring, there has been a scramble for very scarce resources from very few funders. Most organizations significantly cut back on their plans as a result of insufficient resources. National organizations, like the League of Young Voters, are depending on an all-volunteer staff in a number of target states. The United States Student Association has been able to raise less than half of the money they need to turn out their goal of 150,000 students. The same is true for the Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), Rock the Vote and a ton of more regional or local youth voter organizations.

This nonsensical under-resourcing of youth voting efforts is not just among non-partisan organizations. Campaigns are guilty too. At one local Obama office, one single staffer is responsible for all of the college, high school and non-college youth in the entire congressional district. Under these conditions there's the chance that entire groups of young people will fall through the mobilizing cracks. Among (c)4 organizations here in Minnesota doing election work, only one is focusing its attention primarily on college students, and one focusing on neighborhood-based youth.

This is crazy to me. If polls prove youth to be the progressive swing demographic, isn't it in a whole lot of peoples' interest to make sure we get the resources we need to come out as powerful as our potential?

Beyond funding, and perhaps more importantly, there's the question about political accountability.

Where will we be on Nov 5? Will there be a chair for young people at the table when decisions are made about the very things that are bringing us out to vote in droves: the economy, healthcare, the war, our environment? We're working our butts off to mobilize our peers on behalf of the progressive community; the question is, will the progressive community do the same for us?

(Dislcosure: Campus Camp Wellstone and WireTap are members of GenVote)