PEW

Yet again, John McCain makes a play "for the youts." I don't know about you, but I think this video just screams "I'm relevant." The best part about it is that the embed functionality is totally busted unless you want an auto-playing loop in an ill-fitting frame on your blog.

And how's McCainspace's new "Generation 08" doing?

That's right, a whopping two members. To be fair, it's only been a day since the official launch, but hey, maybe it's also all the stiff competition from the College Republican's Storm Network. Or, I don't know - the real MySpace, or that FaceSpace thingum? Or maybe it's just yet another crap social network that no one wants to join. Why hop on a social network with little to no social network opportunities compared to the already robust social network you are already a part of?

Or maybe, as PEW found out in its new poll today, it's just that fewer and fewer young people are identifying as Republicans. PEW found that 37% of 18 - 29 year olds identify as Democrats, compared to just 23% who identify as Republicans. If you add in "leaners," those numbers jump to 55 to 36%.

Kind of hard to startup a social network when your brand is electoral poison.

It's a bit of a slow news day (unless Obama decides he's going to announce Bayh as his VP in the next couple hours). Most of my reading today has been tech heavy. Here's what I'm looking at:

• At WireTap, Sarah has an excellent piece up about rural broadband.
• For any organizations out there thinking about revamping their website, The Bivings Report will help you figure out if you need a content management system.
• Colin Delaney looks at how CRM software can help legislators better manage constituent relations work.
• Kevin Bondelli notes that the College Republicans are trying to counter program in Denver during the DNC. I've already signed up to receive their text messages and emails. Can progressive youth groups in Denver counter-program their counter-programming?
• PEW finds that McCain's Britney/Paris ads did have some effect after all: they dragged his campaign out of the shadows, giving him parity with Obama in the media coverage for the first time in weeks. I guess in that sense they were effective.

The PEW study I posted about yesterday is getting a lot of play. Kevin Drum blogged it, as did The Carpetbagger Report, and Marc Ambinder, all favorably.

Not all the coverage was favorable, however, and I want to point you to the excellent response by Kevin Bondelli to those who doubt the findings.

Here are the fallacies that these critics of the youth vote seem overly fond of:

1. Young people don’t vote, so it doesn’t matter if they identify as Democrats. Even if we accepted the untrue statement that young people don’t vote, they do eventually grow up, this isn’t Peter Pan. Since research in fact has shown that party identification for the most part stays consistent throughout life, it still should be troubling to conservatives.
2. The silly kids are Democrats now that they are young and don’t know any better, but they’ll grow out of it. Research says otherwise my conservative friends.
3. Not enough young people will vote to affect the 2008 election, since Gore and Kerry didn’t win with the youth vote. Have you not heard of a trend line? Surber actually shows the youth vote increasing from 2000 to 2004, he should know better. With elections as close as they are, as well as the examples of Democratic candidates in 2006 that did win because of the youth vote, I don’t know how they can ignore it.

Definitely worth a read today.

A new report by the PEW Research Center confirms what rising primary turnout is already telling us: there is a huge demographic shift approaching in the electorate in the form of the Millennial Generation, and that shift will largely benefit the Democratic Party.

As the PEW data indicates, this is a shift that is occurring among almost all segments of the Millennial generation, but the shift along gender lines seems to be most significant. Among young voters (18 - 29 year olds), in the last 16 years, young women have moved from a +8 advantage for the Democrats (50 - 42%) to an incredible +35 point advantage (63 - 28%). Among young men, that partisan identification has moved from a 10 point deficit (42 - 52% Republican) to a 14 point advantage (52 - 38%).

These are seismic shifts in the electorate and they are hugely significant.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, it was Generation X and the late Baby Boomers who occupied the 18 - 29 year olds slot in the electorate. They were very conservative as a group and helped elect Reagan and Bush Sr., and usher in the Gingrich Revolution. That laid the groundwork for the Republican majorities we have suffered through these last two decades.

The Millennial Generation is larger than the Baby Boom, and on almost every issue they are vastly more progressive. That fact is starting to come through in their voting habits and party identification. As the PEW data makes clear, Millennials could do for Democrats what the late Boomers and Gen Xers did for the Republicans - forge a new governing majority.

One more item of note in the Pew data. Research tells us that if you can get a voter to cast their ballot for a certain party in their first three major elections, that person tends to become a party voter for life. The PEW data shows that Gen X may be one of the first generations to actually buck that trend:

Apparently the Bush Administration's policies are so toxic that they are driving away one of the Republican Party's most loyal bases.

There was a great story on NPR yesterday that captured my attention. Pew recently released their extensive 35,000 person survey that examines the role of faith in daily lives and in political affiliation.

Here is a video that talks about it in an overview. I would embed it but there were issues.

It does a number of things that I consider notable. First, it does a great age demographic breakdown in Chapter 3 (pdf). 68% of 18-29 year olds consider themselves to be Christians. 43% of 18-29 year olds consider themselves to be Protestant but only 22% of those consider themselves Evangelical Protestants.

What is shocking is that more people are comfortable not only church hopping but are considering themselves to be unaffiliated with any religion at all. That number is on the rise according to the survey.

"A good percentage of folks in that group tell us that religion is at least somewhat important in their lives, but they have become disassociated from institutionalized religion," he says.

Among Americans ages 18 to 29, one-in-four said he or she is not affiliated with any religion."

When I think of the image of a Protestant Evangelical I see a young family maybe late 20's early 30's. Its actually old people 60-69 year olds consider themselves Protestant Evangelicals 29% and 70+ 30%.

Secondly, it deals with some of the smaller religions. When we talk about things like Evangelicals its a pretty broad group. Are we talking about Baptist Evangelicals, or Free Evangelicals, or non-affiliated Evangelicals? Most, (41%) of Protestant Evangelical churches are Baptist with 26% being Southern Baptist. And 64% of historically African American churches that are Protestant Evangelical are considered Baptist as well but they are more National Baptist.

This data is interesting when looking at retention rates from childhood. 60% of those who were raised in largely Evangelical families continued to identify as Evangelicals. But what is super interesting, is that a majority those who were less likely to stick around with traditional churches they grew up in were more likely to get involved in another "New Protestant" church. New Protestant Evangelicals are like the Rick Warrens and Joel Osteens of the world.

What they've seen too is that faith is no longer an indicator in voting preference. Where we saw a huge turnout for Republicans among Evangelicals in 2004 that is not necessarily the case anymore, according to reporter Alex Cohen.

"The new school of younger Evangelicals is big and getting bigger and they're not necessarily going to back McCain..."

According to Professor Clyde Wilcox from Georgetown University "Mega church leaders, you know, tend to be a little conservative, but in the middle. And they're not so afraid because they think their churches are doing just fine, so they are willing to enter into dialogue with all kinds of people..."

People, including Barack Obama...."

The piece goes on to tell the story about Obama's visit to Rick Warren's church in southern California in 2006 where he and Sam Brownback had an interesting exchange. Brownback welcomed Obama to "his house" and Obama later declared "This is my house too. This is God's house..."

As has been mentioned before both by Mike and by Zach Exley from Revolution in Jesusland, this is certainly Not Your Father's Religious Right. The "new school" is eager to deal with humanitarian causes, stopping genocide, creation care (i.e. global warming), and a slew of other issues where Republicans have faltered considerably.

The more Democrats become comfortable talking about their faith in a non-trite more genuine way and developing relationships with pastors in their districts or their states the less powerful I think the major old white guys will become.

In the end the cool thing is that Millennials are not merely changing the face of politics, they are changing the evangelical movement as well or they are simply leaving churches altogether which can put more "mainstream" churches into financial instability in the next 5-10 years.

Quick hits for a lazy Saturday. Look for an announcement here tomorrow.

• Are today's teenage girls the next generation of online organizers? Looks like it. A new study from PEW shows that young girls are more likely than boys to be online content creators (35% vs. 20%). The one exception is online video, which is still an area in which boys participate at twice the rate of young girls.
• In anticipation for March 4th, Sen. Obama is wooing young Latinos in Texas, trying to take a bite out of his opponents base. The senator was at UT Pan American this week speaking with students about his education plan.
• Hat tip to Sarah Lai Stirland at Wired for tipping me off to Hillary Speaks to Me, a grassroots video project designed to showcase Sen. Clinton's support among young Americans (from 4 - 35 looks like a descriptive range). The site is one of the most authentically bottom up efforts in support of Senator Clinton that I've seen. The creators say that it's not "too little too late," but I have to disagree. This would have been good to see eight or nine months ago, but at this point it is overshadowed by the sheer volume of quality user generated content clogging the tubes in support of Sen. Obama.
• At WireTap, Future Majority friend and researcher for CIRCLE Karlo Barrios Marcelo explains why three is the magic number.

PEW has released some interesting data on the news consumption habits of Americans, and they were kind enough to break out the 18 - 29 demographic in their analysis. By itself, the topline is pretty unremarkable: "young people get news on the internet," but there is a lot of useful information buried in the report

Pulling out some interesting findings:

• Cable news remains a very important distribution outlet for news if you want to reach young voters, but Sunday talk shows are virtually worthless for reaching young people.
• About a quarter of young people get their news through daily newspapers, but that influence doesn't translate online, where major political news outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post get relatively little attention from young people.
• Only 10% cite late-night talk shows (read: Daily Show, Colbert Report) as sources of information. This cuts against conventional wisdom, though it's not that surprising. Relatively speaking, those shows have a rather small, though granted highly influential and informed, audience.
• The Long Tail is a substantial source of news for young people - this means political blogs, blogs of friends, chat boards, email forwards - an amalgamation of sources that likely rely more on peer networks than and influence than broadcast capability. As the report notes:

However, even as the variety of campaign web information resources has expanded, there are indications that most internet users do not go online for the sole purpose of learning about the campaign. Rather, a majority of web users (52%) say they “come across” campaign news and information when they are going online to do something else. This practice is particularly prevalent among younger web users: 59% of web users under age 30 come across campaign news online compared with 43% of those ages 50 and older.

This seems particularly important because 52% is more than double the 20% who get their news from long-tail sources. This means that even for campaign news found via myspace, CNN.com, Facebook, or any other on-line source, odds are better than even that a young voter found that information through random searches or through exposure via a peer network.

Millennials are at a tipping point in their media consumption habits - particularly as it applies to politics. Broadcast outlets like the cable news networks remain important for the moment, but more and more it is exposure to news and information through online peer networks that is the dominant way of distribution information.

Today, we all head to the polls to choose our representatives and hopefully change the direction of our country. One voting block that is sure to play an important - and expanding - role in today's election is young voters.

In 2004, the media completely botched the story about young voter turnout. An article in the AP mistakenly reported young voters share of the electorate instead of the hard turnout numbers. In 2004, youth turnout as a share of the electorate only rose 1-2% points due to an overall turnout increase of 4% among the voting population. Young Voter strategies has more on the difference between share and turnout here. (pdf)

The result of this error was a complete dismissal of youth turnout for months, and a reinforcement in the minds of many politicians and the media that youth remained apathetic. We know that's not true.

The real story, we now know, was that youth turnout increased by 11% over 2000 turnout levels, and that young voters chose Kerry over Bush by a 10 point margin. This was the largest increase since 18 year olds were granted the vote in 1972.(pdf)

To make sure that this little piece of electoral history doesn't repeat itself, I'd like to establish some baseline info about youth turnout - what to look for, and what we can expect today: