Iowa Youth Press Corps
a resource for members of the media
Key youth groups, both partisan and non-partisan, are working to get students and young people (ages 17-35) to the Iowa Caucus. The bios and contact information for national youth vote experts and young people caucusing can be downloaded here or by emailing jane@youngvoterpac.org. The resource list was compiled by the Young Voter PAC. For questions, please call Jane Fleming Kleeb at 202-445-5263.
Key Websites on Caucus Night for Info on Young Voters:
www.youngvoterpac.org stories on students coming back to caucus and for a partisan youth perspective
www.futuremajority.com on the ground blogging from young progressives
www.youcancaucus.com info on Young Democrats of America and College and Young Democrats of Iowa
www.rockthevote.com non-partisan stories on high school turnout
www.civicyouth.org non-partisan data on caucus turnout
Key Stats on the Youth Vote Nationally and in Iowa:
The conventional wisdom that young people don’t vote is wrong. The 2004 elections saw a 25% increase in 18 to 24 year olds voting and that election marked the beginning of a resurgence in voting among young people.
In 2004, the number of 18-29 year old voters (20.1 million) rivaled the number of voters over the age of 65 (23 million).
There are 480,361 young people ages 18-29 in Iowa and they make up 22.2% of the population in Iowa. There are a total of 105,679 college students in Iowa and they make up 21% of all young people.
21,000 students in Iowa are from “out of state.” The percentage of “out of state” students in Iowa ranges at each school. For example, at the University of Iowa 37% of the 30,000 students are from out of state.
In 2004, 124,000 Democrats participated in the caucus which was twice the level of 2000 but only 6% of the eligible electorate.
Students are beginning to trend Obama in Iowa. Young people (not attending college) are split among the top three contenders. It is critical to point out that young people and students were split among the top candidates in 2004 even though the myth was that they were all caucusing for Dean. In fact, Kerry captured the youth vote in Iowa and the caucus results among young people were not that different than the caucus results for older voters. In 2004, 18-29 year olds went 35% Kerry, 23% Edwards, 20% Dean versus people over 29 went 35% Kerry, 25% Dean, 20% Edwards.
There are two sets of turnout numbers for young people in Iowa. Since these numbers will be the ones we use to compare increase in turnout for 2008, we included both. The important thing to note is the trend. Polling in 2007 along with 2004 and 2006 turnout numbers all show an increase in voting and interest. It is difficult to predict with the caucus happening during winter break if we will see an increase in young people caucusing.
CIRCLE DATA: In 2004, ages 17-29 year olds made up 17.14% (13.65% were 17-24 and 3.48% were 25-29) of the 124,000 Democratic caucus goers. This is an increase of approximately 8% points over 2000.
IOWA DEM PARTY DATA: In 2004, 3.9% of 124,000 Democratic caucus participants were age 18 to 24 (or 4,836 people), 18 to 34 year olds made up 10% of the crowd (or 12,400 people).
Young voters party identification is strongly Democratic (46% identify as Democrats, only 38% of older voters identify as Democrats), reversing a trend where young people were evenly split among parties.
Running targeted voter registration and field programs matter which is why youth groups are in Iowa running programs and why the major Presidential candidates have Youth Vote Directors for the first time in the primary phase. In the 10 most competitive 2004 battleground states where youth groups ran programs, turnout was 64.4% among young voters, compared to 48% across all other states.
The bottom line is, when you target young people they vote. This is the first year Presidential candidates have Youth Vote Directors during the primary phase with resources behind young voter programs so we are all watching to see the impact on the caucus as well as the general election.
Posted on January 1st, 2008
Categories: Presidential, Young Voters
