How Republicans can get the Youth Vote

Republican researchers RK Research have launched a project around discovering why young people tend to vote more for Democrats than Republicans. In a recently released report (PDF) about their upcoming research project RK says it will be doing the survey over the course of several months and will sample 4,400 college students.

I think among the youth movement we have this conversation frequently but this research project is only looking at college students not a broad spectrum of young voters.  The RK paper says that college students only make up 18% of the electorate and as I recall less than 50% of young voters even went to college?  This survey will still be ignoring a large portion of the youth community with its findings.

"Before presenting the data, this report briefly offers three premises: First, college voters now favor the Democratic Party by a considerable margin. Second, college voters have not always been solidly Democratic. And third, college students are electorally important" (page 3)

I have a few comments on these assumptions.

First, I dispute the assumption that "college voters now favor the Democratic Party by a considerable margin."  I think young voters are less likely to support one particular party, and more likely to support a specific candidate; specifically one that is good on their issues and reaches out to ask for their vote.  Those tend to be more left leaning or center left leaning policies and candidates.

Second, the survey says youth have not always been Democratic Party voters. On page 4 it goes on to say:

"In the past ten presidential elections, the Republican Party has won the youth vote three times (1972, 1984, 1988) and has been very close in three instances (1976, 1980, and 2000). Only in 1992, 1996, 2004, and 2008 did the Republican Party lose the youth vote by substantial margins. These loses, however, represent four of the past five presidential elections"

I would never dispute the data saying that Generation X youth were more likely to be GOP or GOP leaning particularly with Reagan support.  The reason they're losing support is that Gen X is almost the anthesis of Gen Y and they're a lot smaller in number. It isn't that one party or another is losing or winning young voters - its that those same voters are growing up and becoming a different demographic. Yesterday's 18-29 year olds are not today's - by a long shot. Similarly, the policies supported by yesterday's young voters are not the policies supported by today's young voters.

Third, I agree that the GOP should try to reach out to youth - indeed BOTH parties should reach out to youth.  The argument that "the age of polical malleability, after which - political science literature shows - voting habits are likely to ermine the same" (page 8) is not merely a footnote in a polisci text book, but should be a stat to live by. The Millennial Generation is larger than the Baby Boomers by 5 million people and significantly larger than Generation X. The first party that gets them and keeps them... will have them for a long time.  When you talk about party building this is critical for long term growth.

Fellow FM reporter Karlo knows a little something about stats and data. He said just glacing at the methodology that it looked flawed. I concur. There will be 120 students surveyed at a broad spectrum of schools by grabbing them in the student unions.

"Participants are selected randomly by asking all passerby in the student center or student union if they are interested in taking a survey in exchange for a candy bar."

This is even further isolation because you're not taking into account students who are non-traditional and don't set foot on campuses. Similarly, students who walk through the student centers in general - students who STOP and talk to someone who grabs him/her is a pretty special selection of people too.

Finally, if the GOP wants to talk about how they can get young people with their policies it isn't rocket science. They have to be more centrist and stop scaring people with the "tea bagger" policies. If they want to approach young people from the right, I suggest talking to Ron Paul. Be more libertarian. Be more individual rights focused - support legalization of pot, be more pro-choice, pro-gay marriage ... not simply because you "support the lifestyle" but because the government has no business being in the bedroom business.

This is just anecdotal evidence I know from years of working in the youth movement and in politics. But RK Research already knows this information. Their website highlights that the hard lined GOP opposition to gay marriage proposes a long term problem for the Republicans. This comes on the heals of the Focus on the Family release saying that they believe they've lost the "gay marriage" battle.

Their second point is that young voters don't have a very high opinion of Sarah Palin - one of the leaders of the more conservative teabagger wing of the GOP. They were more apt to support candidates like Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Arnold Schwarzenegger by almost double their support for Sarah Palin. These are all very centrist moderate candidates two of which come from more left leaning states.

How can the GOP win the youth vote? My advice? Go left and spend a whole lot of money reaching out to young voters.