Young voter engagement: community service, our down-ballot challenge, and the 50-state strategy

Cornell Belcher's revelatory post-election analysis - blogged about by Mike here on Future Majority and picked up other places (here and here) - has been seen as a key argument for keeping some form of a 50-state strategy, especially as it relates to young voters. Belcher discovered that Obama's success among young voters was somewhat limited to his candidacy: 20 percent of young Obama voters did not vote for a Congressional candidate in 2008. We can safely assume that the drop-off rate for lower profile, down-ballot races was even more significant. He concluded:

These younger and browner surge voters are, by and large, Obama's right now, not necessarily the Democratic Party’s. If Democrats are to strengthen our majority coalition going into the off year, we will clearly need to reach and engage these voters with some party persuasion. (Emphasis added.)

So if there is an imperative to continue reaching out to young voters with a partisan - not just a candidate-specific - message, what should that message be? An experiment run in Colorado may hold the answer.

In October 2007, Democrats Work launched a pilot project in Arapahoe County, Colorado – a hotly contested battleground outside of Denver – to measure the effect of its Democrat-branded community service programs in targeted precincts and among targeted groups of voters. Fifty precincts in a competitive state Senate district were randomly divided into treatment and control groups. Each treatment and control group contained approximately 6,000 Democratic and unaffiliated households, including approximately 1,500 young voters.

The pilot program, which consisted of 10 targeted community service events and voter contact around those events, ended in September 2008. Service activities occurred within the treatment precincts at a rate of one event every four to six weeks. Democrats Work contacted voters in the treatment eight times precincts (with a combination of mail and phone calls) with information about upcoming service opportunities and touting the success of past events. Democrats Work engaged Professor David Nickerson of Notre Dame to measure the impact of the service-based approach on voters’ attitudes towards Democrats.

The results with respect to young and unaffiliated young voters are extremely promising. In a post-program survey, voters under the age of 35 in the treatment group (i.e., those who received information regarding the service events) “report being ‘warmer’ to the Democratic Party, feel the Democratic Party shares their values more than the Republican Party, and intend to vote for Democrats.” With respect to young, unaffiliated voters (as opposed to all young voters), the results are even more encouraging. We found that increased positive feelings towards Democrats caused a 30-point swing in vote share among young, unaffiliated votes.

Put another way, if a group of 100 young, unaffiliated voters would normally split their votes 50 for Democrats and 50 for Republicans, the implementation of a Democratic service program would cause the vote totals to shift to 65 for the Democrats and 35 for the Republicans. Mind you, we are not even talking about young people engaging in community service - they just need to know that Democrats are. The message inherent in branded service activities is that Democrats are putting our values into action in a way that resonates with young people. (As Dr. Nickerson points out, political scientists generally view partisanship as a fixed identity that changes slowly if at all once it is established. There was no evidence that the Democrats Work program improved sentiments towards the Democratic Party among older voters or committed partisans.)

With roughly one-third of the 42 million registered voters under the age of 35 listed as unaffiliated, this population could be an electoral goldmine up and down the ticket if Democrats turn them into a reliable voting bloc. It will require all levels of the Democratic Party to adopt a service-based approach and a willingness to put resources behind a newly proven strategy.