Young Voters Have Issues

Over the course of the last week, I've picked through the polling results from the recent Harvard Institute of Politics Survey and the joint MTV/CBS News poll. We've talked about Obama's lead among young voters, and McCain's deficit among the same, and we've talked about how young people are engaged at a much higher level this year than in previous years. Now I want to take a look at young voter's policy concerns.

There tend to be a few bits of conventional wisdom when it comes to young voters and policy issues. The first is that the only thing young people care about is the draft, or as Ralph Nader recently (and inaccurately) stated, the only thing that will increase youth engagement is the threat of a draft. The second is that young people are consumed by humanitarian issues like the genocide in Darfur. There are grains of truth in both statements - in 2004 there was a lot of messaging done by Rock the Vote and other groups around the draft that did in fact help spur youth turnout, and young people are disproportionately active around the issue of genocide. As with most pieces of conventional wisdom, though, these do not convey the whole truth.

The results of the Harvard IOP Survey reveal that the concerns of young voters have shifted radically since the fall of 2007. Six months ago, Iraq was the #1 issue for 37% of young Americans. Today, that number has shrunk to 20%. In March 2007, the economy was the top concern of just 5% of young people. Today it ranks as the greatest concern of 30% of young voters. The war was a motivator for youth action in 2004, but in 2008, it seems that the tanking economy will drive young people to the ballot box.

The Harvard IOP Survey honed in on these concerns through its novel use of multiple criteria in ranking the importance of youth issues. The survey asked respondents what issues were most important in determining how they would cast their ballot in November and what issues were most relevant to them personally. They used answers in both categories to construct a composite score that could more accurately reflect the importance of various policy issues to young voters:

The reasons for this shift, it turns out, is that most young people feel that our current economic downtown has a greater impact on them personally than the war. Young people who are applying to college or attending school are worried about the skyrocketing costs of tuition. Many are graduating from college, on average, with $20k in debt, and they are worried about their job prospects. According to the survey, 70% of college students believe that it will be difficult to find a job upon graduation. By contrast, the war only directly affects a small portion of young people today. If you are worried about how you will pay off your student loans and make rent next month, it gets a lot harder to worry about something happening on the other side of the globe. It's probably even harder when you consider how much activism has gone to opposing the war with so few tangible results.

Looking through the chart, there are some other interesting facts to be gleaned about the activism and policy concerns of the Millennial generation. In most polls that I've seen, the environment ranks well below bread and butter issues like the economy and health care. As the graph above shows, the environment typically garners a paltry 5% or so of support from most youth. Yet the environment usually is considered one of the policy areas around which young people - particularly college students - are most active. Meanwhile, health care consistently ranks as one of the top concerns of young people, but there is almost no youth activism around universal health care. It's a strange dichotomy and I've been at a loss to explain it.

Judging by the IOP results, "Net Relevance" seems to be the key. Both issues are perceived as important ones, yet for some reason young people tend to see the environment as a policy concern that more directly affects their lives. It's an interesting finding, and may be skewed by the fact that the survey sampled 18 - 24 year olds, fully half of which are in college and are thus likely to be on their university's health care plan (or that of their parents). I wonder if the two stats might reverse (and fall more in line with conventional wisdom) if the sample was expanded to cover all 18 - 29 year olds?

What's clear is that young people are driven by a variety of concerns, but the economy trumps all. In a year of record youth turnout, candidates up and down the ballot would do well to talk about creating an economy that help the Millennial generation - also known as Generation Debt - climb out of the economic hole.