Turnout vs. Expectations: The Youth Narrative Post Iowa

What will be the youth vote narrative come January 4th? It's not an easy question to answer, and indeed it's something that can and will be shaped in large part by a number of factors: the caucus results, historical data, conventional wisdom about past caucuses, the campaigns themselves as they spin the results, and youth advocates.

Here's a run-down on what I see as the variables in play that could affect how the youth story is reported. I've loosely ranked them in terms of how important/influential I think they are.

This is a long one. Join me on the flip.

Who Wins
For months I've been arguing that the youth vote narrative was linked too closely to the campaign of Barack Obama. Sometimes this appeared to be deserved (winter/spring '07, and November/December), and other times it did not (Hillary lead Obama among young voters in the polls through the summer and into early fall). But it has always concerned me because of the historical precedent. In 2004 the youth vote was linked to Dean, and to this very day it is hard to read a story about youth participation in the caucus without reading how "youth failed to turnout, thus causing the downfall of Howard Dean." This, despite the fact that exit polling and analysis of the 2004 caucus tell a very different story: namely, that youth participation quadrupled over 2000 levels, but broke heavily in favor of John Kerry, not Howard Dean.

Next week, if Obama wins, there will be a very good chance that his victory will be attributed to a youth army, and the media narrative of youth forging the base of a new progressive majority will be confirmed. This is the narrative that the press has assigned to his campaign - not matter how much he's tried to tamp down expectations by referring to young voters as merely "icing on the cake." If Obama loses Iowa, it will be because young voters didn't turnout, and it will be proof that money spent to reach out to youth is money wasted.

Bear in mind that this narrative, formed around the outcome of the caucus, has very little to do with the actual support his campaign received from young caucus-goers. Next week, youth may or may not turnout in greater numbers than they did in 2004. And like 2004, they may not vote as a monolithic block, but rather split their votes between 2 or more candidates. In the eyes of the media, however, the story will be formed largely by the winner and under deadline to produce a story, most reporters will fall back on the conventional wisdom and established storylines describing the candidates strategies. In a 24 hour news cycle, a win is a win for that strategy, even if the numbers tell a different story.

Historical Data
It may seem strange, to place a data-driven variable so high on my list, right after saying that the media tends to ignore the actual turnout data. This is correct when examining the narrative around the campaigns (again, see Dean). The media tends to not look too deeply into who young voters are actually supporting in the caucus. They missed Hillary's rise among youth during the summer and the fall - continuing to report on Obama as the youth juggernaut - just as they missed Kerry's dominance among young caucus goers in 2004.

This might not apply, however, to demographic turnout numbers. Especially this year, when the media is focusing a lot of serious attention on the youth demographic. These turnout numbers will be judged against the historical record, and right now there are two competing data sets describing that record:

• CIRCLE: The first data set was collected by CIRCLE, a youth-vote research operation that is part of PEW. CIRCLE estimates that 17-24 year olds made up 13.65% of caucus-goers in 2004, and that 17-29 year olds made up 17% of caucus participants. And PEW has reported that turnout among young voters in 2004 quadrupled (pdf) over 2000 levels.
• Iowa Democratic Party: The IADP tells a much different story. According to the Iowa Democratic Party, only 3.9% of caucus goers in 2004 were between the ages of 18 and 24, or 4,836 people, and only 10% of caucus goers were between 18 and 34.

These are wildly divergent numbers, and on the whole I tend to trust CIRCLE, which is much more transparent about how they calculate their figure and has both a history and an organizational mission centered around young voter participation. The Iowa Democratic Party, on the other hand, is pretty tight-lipped about how they actually calculate their numbers, but it's pretty well-known that two sources are the VAN and sign-in sheets from the 2004 caucus, both of which are highly suspect. In 2004 the Iowa caucus precincts ran out of sign-in sheets because turnout increased so much. And the VANS have never provided accurate information on young voters. Ask any political operative and they'll tell you that the VAN is useless if you're trying to make young voter contacts. And to be perfectly blunt, the Party did not care about young voters in 2004, so I doubt they made any serious efforts to gather data or produce reliable results. Taken together, these likely account for the low-ball numbers coming out of the Party.

Right now, the IADP numbers are winning the media war. They've been quoted far more by mainstream media outlets like the AP and the Washington Post. In fact, I've never seen the CIRCLE numbers reported anywhere but in the blogs or in conversation with youth vote advocates.

These offer two very different baselines for reporters on January 4th. Using the IADP numbers, we are virtually guaranteed a good youth vote narrative. Turnout will certainly surpass those meager levels. It's a low bar that is easy to clear, and could lead to some spectacular coverage.

The CIRCLE numbers are more problematic. There really was a huge increase in youth participation in 2004. And even during a race as exciting as the one we are currently watching, with unprecedented efforts by all three top campaigns, the early caucus date could still keep enough young voters at home (and out of state) so as to make the overall turnout decrease, or increase so slightly as to be insignificant. Decreased turnout or or only slightly larger turnout means a "bad," or negative narrative will form. Conventional wisdom about young voters will take over. Journalists will compare the unprecedented efforts of the campaigns to reach youth to a meager increase or decrease in turnout and draw all the worst conclusions.

Turnout vs. Share: There's a sub-theme to be aware of here as well. There are two ways of measuring how a demographic performs during an election. These are turnout and share of the electorate, and the media has a hard time distinguishing between the two. Turnout means the hard number of people participating. In the IADP data above, 4,836 18-24 year olds caucused. That's the hard turnout number for that age demographic. You'll also notice that the data states that 18-24 year olds made up 3.9% of caucus goers in 2004. That's the share of the electorate for that age demographic. These two numbers can present very different pictures of demographic performance. The 2004 general election provides us with an excellent example.

In 2000, 18-29 year olds made up 17% of the electorate. That was their share of the electorate. In 2004, 18-29 year olds once again comprised 17% of the electorate. The "logical" conclusion is that the youth vote did not increase, and that was what the media reported on November 5th, 2004. Of course, this was wrong. If one examined the actual turnout numbers, it quickly became apparent that there was a huge increase in youth participation. In fact, 4.3 million more 18-29 year olds turned out in 2004 than did in 2000. That increase didn't appear in the share of the electorate data because turnout increased among all age demographics. In order to get a sense of what happened with young voters this year, we'll need to examine not only their share of the electorate, but also the hard turnout numbers. The media missed this in 2004, and the campaigns and youth advocates will all be checking this data to make sure that the campaigns and press don't make the same mistakes twice.

Campaign Spin

When it comes to the youth vote narrative, the only campaign spin that matters is Obama's. His staffers are well aware of this, and are working hard to play the expectations game. Just check out this quote from a recent youth vote piece in the Washington Post:

Huckabee's campaign and the rest are aware, however, that student enthusiasm usually doesn't translate into student votes. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean was a big campus favorite in 2004, but that year, 18-to-24-year-olds amounted to less than 4 percent of Democratic caucusgoers.

The turnout was a huge disappointment to Gordon Fischer, who was chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party in 2004, and it left a scar. When he and his wife, Monica, were considering whether to endorse Obama, Fischer's first question to campaign officials was: "Is this a children's crusade? Are we counting on just young people to vote? If that's the case, I think that's problematic to say the least."

The Fischers' concerns were allayed when a senior campaign aide described students as "icing on the cake." Fischer has since become a key Obama adviser in Iowa.

That "icing on the cake" line has become something of a standard message for Obama staffers and surrogates looking to tamp down expectations for their youth turnout. Note that Fischer, himself a former head of the IADP is touting those low-ball numbers. Fischer is a prominent IA Democratic official, and probably an Obama surrogate, indicating that the campaign has also adopted those numbers. I wouldn't be surprised to hear Obama staffers whipping out those numbers (whatever the results) come January 4th. Those two lines together may in fact be the Obama response should he lose Iowa: "See, we greatly expanded the Democratic voting universe, (but hey, we knew that youth alone wouldn't get the job done and in NH we're working to yada yada yada)."

Of course, if Obama wins, we'll get a whole lot of "generational change" speechifying and Obama can then capitalize on the whole "youth is a hidden vote/secret weapon" narrative that the media reported for the last year, and again, we'll get the Iowa Party numbers because they will make the Obama victory and youth field operation look even better in the media. That will mean more press, more excitement, more momentum going into New Hampshire.

There's an off chance we'll see counter-spin from the Clinton campaign, especially if Obama finishes in second or third. Clinton pollster Mark Penn seems to have a grudge against young voters and has been quoted prominently in the media a number of times this cycle talking down the youth vote. If Clinton wins, I'd expect to see Penn try to put a few more nails in Obama's coffin by talking down young voters once again (a stupid long-term strategic move for Hillary and the Party, but probably a good tactical move short term for the campaign). Should this happen, I'd expect to see Penn whip out the "share of the electorate" argument I outlined above to confuse the results. In a caucus with more people in general participating, it might be hard to see the rise in youth participation, just as it was in November 2004.

Youth Advocate Spin

The Obama campaign won't be the only one out there looking to influence the media narrative. A lot of organizations, both partisan and non partisan (Rock the Vote/Rock the Caucus, the Iowa PIRGs, the Young Democrats of America, the Young Voter PAC, even me at Future Majority), have fought long and hard to get an accurate media narrative that reports on the increases in youth turnout we've seen since 2004. That's left us somewhat stuck in the middle of all these forces, nearly all of which are likely to have a greater influence on the media narrative than we will - no matter how many press interviews we do next week.

On the one hand, we've been pushing the CIRCLE numbers for a while because we believe those to be the most accurate account of youth participation in the 2004 caucus. We're concerned about the long-term narrative, not just the short term story, and in that long narrative, youth participation has been increasing and substantive since 2004.

Yet youth organizers are very aware that turnout comparisons between 2004 and 2008 based on the IADP numbers could provide a highly positive youth narrative in the media (even without an Obama win). That in turn could create a more favorable media climate in general for youth advocates in 2008 and beyond, and a more receptive press who could then be taught the real story of youth participation in the 2004 Iowa caucus.

Ultimately, I think the decision will be taken out of the hands of youth advocates. Total turnout numbers (or even the youth share of the electorate), the outcome of the caucus, and campaign spin will be far more prominent in media coverage, and youth organizers will need to react to that and try to steer it more than create their own competing narrative.

Concusion
Basically, it's a crapshoot that will in large part (unfortunately) depend on how Obama fares in the caucus. I hate the fact that the youth narrative will be tied to so closely to a single candidate and judged on that candidate's performance, particularly when there is a good chance that the candidate will only get a plurality of support from young voters, but that's just the way the media works. I remain ambivalent about the CIRCLE/IADP turnout dispute. My gut, and all my work in the past year, screams that we should be shoving the CIRCLE numbers into the eyes of every reporter out there. But the shadier political junkie in me relishes the fact that the IADP numbers set such a low bar and are currently in favor among the campaigns and the mainstream press.

Less than a week to go before we see how it all shakes out.