Them Dems

UPDATED: MAY 13, 2008

YING & YANG

Democracy Corps publishes a survey of younger voters and their importance to the 2008 election for Democrats. As this article is being written, the West Virginia primary results are coming being tabulated. Exit polls are revealing that 14% of all voters in that State’s primary are 18 to 29 years old. This percentage of younger voters is one that has been rather common in most of the primaries.

Democracy Corps concludes from its survey:

We reported earlier this week on how young people are experiencing and engaging in this election. This report focuses on young people’s political preferences six months into the heat of the Democratic primary.

Young voters at this point are as supportive of Democrats as they were in 2004 and 2006. Democratic identification is stable and young people’s support for a generic Democratic candidate for President stands at 59 to 32 percent, a margin which exceeds young voters’ Democratic performance in the 2006 elections. There is every reason for Democrats to seek an even bigger youth margin in 2008.

But there are challenges emerging, not least of which is the residue of the long primary potentially producing lowered enthusiasm for Democrats and for voting more broadly. John McCain, moreover, is seen more positively than we anticipated suggesting that Democrats cannot just count on young voters without some real work communicating with them.

There are ways to elevate young voter support and turnout and allow them to play a potentially transformational role. To start, it is critically important we re-brand the Republican nominee as, well, a Republican. As we noted in 2007, young people in general are profoundly alienated from the Republican Party and nothing in this survey suggests this has changed. However, it is also true that many of the biases young people have against the Republicans do not yet apply to John McCain. John McCain does not enjoy great numbers here, but too many young people draw distinctions between him and the Republican Party.

Every Democrat should read this analysis. The question for Democrats in November is whether it will be the Ying or Yang for the Party.

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UPDATED: MAY 11, 2008

At the onset, one proposition seems paramount to all others. A Democratic Party that has held the presidency in just eight of the last twenty-eight years cannot afford to lose a single voter in its quest to regain that office. In 2008, Democrats seem destined to form a firing squad by forming a circle.

Both Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton’s campaigns are hurling charge and counter charge. Most recently, Sen. Clinton is basing her continued campaign on two propositions: a) Sen. Obama cannot win the General Election because he cannot appeal to White voters within the Party and therefore, b) she has a broader base of support for the General Election, particularly in such battleground States such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Arkansas. Perhaps Paul Begala put it most graphically when he noted that Sen. Obama cannot win the Presidency with African Americans and egg-headed liberals.

There is a kernel of truth in Begala’s assertion. The charts below list exit poll results from the primary states in which the voters were questioned on their Party status and race. The result is the spread between Sens. Clinton and Obama. (Sen. Clinton’s result minus Sen. Obama’s result.) A positive number (black) is favorable to Clinton and a negative number (red) is favorable to Obama.

Out of the 27 states listed, Sen. Obama has won White Democrats in only 3 states; New Mexico, Illinois and Vermont. It should give Democrats pause for concern that Sen. Obama carried White Democratic voters in his home state, Illinois, by a spread of only 7%. Equally significant, Sen. Obama won White Democrats by a double digit spread in only one state: Vermont. More critically, as the primaries have unfolded, there is no evidence that Sen. Obama has been able to increase his support among White Democrats.