"If Youth Vote, Obama Wins" - Yes, But It's a Little More Compicated

This weekend Craig linked to an Op-Ed by Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com in the NY Post that extrapolated an Obama win in November if turnout trends from the primaries held true. I think the main thrust of the piece was correct, but I want to pick a little around the edges and tighten up some of the points Nate made.

In 2004, voters aged 29 or younger represented 9% of the Democratic primary electorate, according to statistics compiled from exit polls. In 2008, that fraction jumped to 14%, representing a 52% improvement as a share of the electorate. Those voters overwhelmingly favored Obama, preferring him to Hillary Clinton by a 60-37 margin.

What might a parallel surge in youth turnout do for Obama in November? My site, FiveThirtyEight.com, simulates the election 10,000 times each day based on the most recent polling and demographic trends. Our most current projection assigned Obama a 64% chance of winning the election, with an average count of 298 electoral votes. If, however, we assume that youth turnout increases by 52% in each state, as it did in the primaries, and assign two-thirds of those votes to Obama, Obama's electoral vote projection jumps to 315, and he wins the election 72% of the time.

Entire states may change hands as a result of motivating the youth vote, particularly in the South (think Virginia, North Carolina and possibly Georgia) and the West (Colorado, Nevada, Montana), where young voters are abundant.

Those are some amazing numbers. Here's the thing though. I'm not sure if Silver is talking about increased "turnout," the total number of youth who go to the polls (a hard, absolute number), or "share of the electorate," the percentage of youth in the electorate (a relative number determined in part by the turnout of other groups, and the number from which he derived the 52% increase figure).

Youth share of the electorate in 2004 was 17%. An increase of 52% would make young voters ~26% share of the electorate this November. That's awesome, but it will also mean that young voters, who represent about ~20% (pdf) of the eligible electorate, would have to overperform their share by ~5 - 6%.

If Silver is talking about turnout, youth turnout in 2004 was 49% (pdf). A 52% increase would mean that turnout in 2008 will be roughly 73%, or a 24 point increase. That too, seems quite high to me. In 2004, in the battleground states targeted by youth organizers, turnout topped off at 64%. That's a respectable 15 points ahead of the national average, but still a far cry from 73%.

Assuming that my math is correct here, Silver's estimates, while encouraging, are a bit over the top. What we saw during the primaries, I think, was a surge of mostly college-age or educated kids who would have voted anyway in November finally making the decision to get involved earlier in the process. Getting somewhat engaged, and mostly college, youth to become involved earlier is a whole different ball of wax than moving disengaged non-college youth to the polls. And that is exactly what the Obama campaign would need to do in order to meet Silver's predictions.

Unfortunately, there are just too many barriers to participation for young voters. And despite reassurances from staffers within the campaign, I think Obama will continue to focus too much of his youth effort solely on college campuses, which make up only a fraction of the youth vote. Personally, I'm expecting to see youth perform at their share of the electorate (20%), and the national turnout rate to hit somewhere between 55 and 64%. I would be very (and very pleasantly) surprised to see the national youth turnout average break that 64% ceiling.

All of this isn't to cast doubt on the importance of the youth vote, and it's not at all to say that youth won't turnout in record numbers. Let me state this unequivocally: I firmly believe that youth turnout will be large and will break records this year. But this is to say let's at least be realistic about what to expect.

In the NY Post piece, Silver makes two more points that I want to touch on. The first is about branding. In a follow-up piece on the 538 blog, Nate notes that powerful branding can be a double edged sword for Obama. It can draw in Millennials, but push away more cynical Gen Xers and Boomers. This weekend, Ad Age ran a very interesting piece on Obama's branding strategy that touched on this problem. I tend to agree with Ad Age. Gen Xers and Boomers who are inclined to vote for Obama may be repulsed by the slick branding and it may offend their loner/stay out of the crowd cultural ethic, but they're going to vote for Obama anyway because between McCain and Obama, only one candidate is going to represent the democratic cultural values that they do cherish.

On a personal note, I find that this is dating me. While I sit on the cusp of Gen X and the Millennials, I'm pro-Obama because of what I think he could do for the country, and I'm continually wowed by the branding skills of his campaign, but I'm also personally turned off by that aspect of the Obama campaign.

Finally, the piece closed with a few suggestions as to how Obama could ensure that young voters turnout in greater numbers this cycle:

Face Time. Ultimately, however, the trickiest issue in motivating the youth vote may be that young voters have too many things they want to do, and not enough time to do it. They are not as likely as older voters to be engaged in the campaign through traditional means like reading newspapers or watching cable news. As such, the campaign needs to get in front of them - in both real and virtual ways. The "real" part might involve organizing a tour of Midwestern colleges shortly after the Democratic Convention in late August or early September, at which Obama can kick off massive voter registration drives. The virtual part occurs mostly via the Internet, an area in which the Obama campaign already excels. He could further his efforts by hosting periodic online chat sessions at BarackObama.com, or by agreeing to participate in the YouTube New Orleans Town Hall forum on Sept. 18, which neither Obama nor McCain have yet committed to.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Not because Obama shouldn't do these things. Even John Kerry did these things (as much as he was technologically able). It's that these suggestions are wholly inadequate to achieve anything close to the turnout numbers Silver postulates earlier in his piece.

Focusing solely on college campuses won't do the trick because, as I stated above, only a small fraction of young voters reside on college campuses. And while they may be the easiest to motivate and organize, their numbers just aren't big enough by themselves to have the impact Silver - and all progressives - are hoping for.

Obama is going to need to move off campus. He's going to need to be at the places young voters hang out and targeting non-college youth at bars, concerts, barbershops, parks, coffee shops, apartment complexes and more. He's going to need the state by state infrastructure to conduct massive peer-to-peer field campaigns, which we know are the gold standard for driving young people to the polls. Yes, he's going to need to take advantage of the efficiencies offered by web video, user generated content, and social networks as a different kind of public, "third space," but as I've noted in the past, he's also going to need a lot of help.

So while I agree with the thrust of Silver's op-ed - if young people vote, Obama wins - I think in execution it's a whole lot more complicated than that.