New Progressive Politics

Independents and Millennials Poised to Shake-up the California Primary towards Obama

Though Clinton still leads in the polls for the Feb. 5th California primary, Obama has two stealth forces that are poised to close that gap and potentially beat her: Independents and the young Millennial generation. Two recent articles in the San Francisco Chronicle help spell out how that might work.

1) Independents: California has huge numbers of independents who can ONLY vote in the Democratic primary. The Republican primary is closed to only registered Republicans. So even Independents who might want to vote for McCain only have the option to vote Democrat, and the candidate who clearly does best among independents is Obama.

The numbers are striking, as laid out by Mark Baldassare, the head of the respected Public Policy Institute of California, which does many state-wide surveys and polls:

“Since the 2000 presidential election, the number of major party voters has fallen by 800,000, while the "decline to state" (or independent) rolls have grown by 700,000 voters. Although Democrats still outnumber Republicans by nine percentage points (43 percent to 34 percent), independents, who account for 1 in 5 voters in California, have injected a new level of uncertainty into the state's partisan contests.”


2) Millennials: Large numbers of young people are now registered to vote in California and because they are new to the game, they are less clearly understood. Our New Politics Institute has done much work on this generation and it seems clear that they are more energized by an Obama candidacy at this point. So a critical issue going into he Feb. 5th contest will be the youth turnout, and the margin that goes for Obama. Again, today’s Chronicle has some striking numbers from the Public Policy Institute of California:

“Analysts and politicians have long lamented the low voter turnout among the 18- to 30-year-old set, which has fluctuated over the past three decades but never surpassed the 52 percent recorded in 1972, the first year 18-year-olds could cast ballots.

But this year, young voters and those who study them say things appear to be changing. In California, 63 percent of 25- to 34-year-old residents and 57 percent of 18- to 24-year-old residents are registered to vote, according to surveys conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California.”

The outcome of California is going to have a big bearing on the national race and so these two developments take on new importance in the next couple weeks. Simon lays the importance of California in a terrific post that you can continue to read here.

Hang tight.

Peter Leyden
Director of The New Politics Institute

Google.org Now Moving on Five 21st Century Challenges

At the end of last week, the leaders of Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, finally announced the five areas that they will focus their money and attention in the coming years. In the language that we use around NDN and the New Politics Institute, the areas are five 21st century challenges that the old politics of the 20th century has ignored but that the new politics of this century needs to address.

I sat in on the conference call they held with Larry Brilliant, the head of Google.org, and he outlined the plan to take an initial $25 million and support organizations or invest in companies in each of these five spaces. They are:

  • “Developing renewable energy cheaper than coal.” This is the holy grail of the green tech world, and Google is going to help make this happen as fast as possible.
  • “Accelerate the commercialization of plug-in electric vehicles.” Which ties into the first one, because once the electric grid is running off clean energy, then the plug-ins leverage that same clean energy source.
  • “Fuel the Growth of Small and Medium-sized enterprises in the developing world.” This fills the gap between the World-Bank level infrastructure projects, and the Grameen Bank micro-loan space. In between, there are the bulk of job-producing small business which need capital and resources too.
  • “Inform and Empower to Improve Public Services.” This leverages one of Google’s core competencies of aggregating good information and getting it into the hands of those who can make for change. It can involve simple things like getting the information of results about kid’s schools in rural areas to the authorities and international agencies who might be able to help.
  • Predict and Prevent.” This is all about getting early warning system in place to detect the outbreaks of any pandemics that might arise, like Bird Flu. This stems from Brilliant’s personal interest in this area.

I know Brilliant from pre-Google days, and his personal story is a fascinating one, one that I laid out in a lengthy magazine-length interview earlier this decade. In short, Brilliant was part of the team the helped eradicate smallpox in the 1970s, a daunting 20th century challenge that we definitively solved.

Onto this century’s challenges….

Peter Leyden
Director of the New Politics Institute

Obama’s Online Organizing Tools and Amazing Offline Results

An interesting factoid was thrown into play today by Micah Sifry at TechPresident. He did a comparison of how the supporters of the three major Democratic presidential candidates are using online tools at the campaign websites to organize offline activities like throwing house parties, fundraisers and phone banking.

The short answer is that Obama is overwhelming Clinton and Edwards. The numbers are really striking. Take the state of California where the statewide polls still have Hillary up by a surprisingly large margin. Yet you look at grassroots supporter-generated events in some of the key cities:

  • Los Angeles: Obama 170, to Clinton 8, and Edwards 0.
  • San Francisco: Obama 189, to Clinton 9, and Edwards 29.
  • San Diego: Obama 55, to Clinton 6, and Edwards 30.

Even if you go to Hillary’s home state of New York, Obama numbers tower over hers:

  • New York City: Obama 292, Clinton 13, Edwards 0.

Obama has clearly encouraged a bottom-up campaign that empowers his supporters to make things happen in his name. They clearly are responding in ways that have almost no parallel in campaigns on the other side – let alone on the Republican side, where there is almost nothing of this sort beyond the Ron Paul phenom.

We’ll see how this plays out by the primary day on Feb. 5th. My guess is that this is a ticking time bomb that is unnoticed now, but that will have large repercussions as the day to vote approaches. It’s not clear whether it will be enough to close the current gap, but I’d much rather have hundreds of hubs of campaign activity in a city than a handful, let alone none.

Peter Leyden
Director of the New Politics Institute

How MTV's Street Team is Changing Politics

Check out the full post at: think.mtv.com

This is the first piece in a year-long series about young people, voting and politics.

How MTV's Street Team is Changing Politics

Our generation is changing politics-who participates and who wins.

Normally around this time of the year we hear from pundits and reporters that young people don't vote, they're apathetic, just a group of elusive voters and anyone that tries to get them to vote or involved in politics might as well be chasing windmills.

Well, we actually know what gets young people to vote. You simply talk to them about issues they care about both where they live and where they hang out and they turn out to vote. Better yet, they also stay involved in their communities year round.

Increasingly, young people are hanging out online and obviously live in all 50 states including DC. So if you want more young people involved in politics, you are probably wondering what will work in 2008 to get a critical mass of young people to the polls. Just how can you get more than 20 million to turn out this time around? Welcome to MTV's Street Team ‘08.

Before the Now, First the Then (or lessons learned)
2004 was the first time we saw an increase in youth turnout in over a decade. The last time before that was 1992 when MTV's Choose or Lose program targeted politicians to get them on record about issues young people care about. Bill Clinton embraced MTV, wrapped himself in the MTV flag just like Madonna did in her famous ad on MTV in 1990, and the youth vote that year helped propel him to the White House.

Check out the full post (this is just a summary) at: think.mtv.com

Background on Nevada, Hispanics, and Immigration

On Saturday, January 19th the Democratic Presidential campaign moves to Nevada where the Democrats will caucus to express their preference. A week later, South Carolina votes, completing the new Democratic calendar that added these two states to the traditional Iowa and New Hampshire mix.

Adding these two states brought new regions and new voters - particularly African-Americans and Hispanics - to the early and important stages of the nominating process. To help our friends and allies, we've pulled together some background materials on the Nevada Caucus, including background on the importance of the Southwest, the fight to reform America's broken immigration system, and the rise of Hispanics in American politics:

The Nevada Debate and Caucus (November 15, 2007)This memo explains the strategic importance of the Southwest and how it drove the decision in 2005 by the DNC to change the decades-old Democratic Presidential nominating process, long dominated by Iowa and New Hampshire.

The 50-Year Strategy (October 30, 2007)This article lays out a grand strategy for how today's Democrats could build a lasting electoral majority and today's progressives could seize the new media, build off new constituencies like Hispanics and the millennial generation, and solve the urgent governing challenges of our times.

Hispanics Rising (September 20, 2007) This major new report reviews the emerging politics of the fastest-growing part of the American electorate, one deeply changed by the immigration debate. The report addresses how critical the Southwest is in the lead up to the 2008 Presidential Election.

We've added a page to our website that contains all of this information and will be updated frequently, so be sure to check back in the days ahead.

For more background, check out the following memos:

On Obama, race and the end of the Southern Strategy (January 4, 2008)

On the mortgage crisis, immigration and the need for a new economic strategy for America (December 21, 2007)

1%, 62% and the failure of Tancredoism (December 20, 2007)

Can Democrats seize the opportunity the immigration debate offers them? (December 11, 2007)

There are also two great resources from the Nevada Democrats worth reviewing: a website that helps viewers understand and explore the details and significance of the caucus, as well as a YouTube channel they are debuting to help educate Democrats about the caucus.

What Happened with the NH Youth Vote?

We have plenty of theories this morning on how and why Clinton pulled out a win in the New Hampshire primary. I am happy to say the youth vote is not being blamed for Obama's loss and instead the Clinton campaign and even some pundits are saying it was because of the youth vote that she won.

Our first concern in the youth vote community was less about who won or lost, and more about how the surge in Iowa would be portrayed if Obama did not win. The conventional wisdom in 2004 was all young people were voting for Dean. That was not true, young voters were split between Kerry, Dean and Edwards. However, that didn't stop the media from blaming young people for Dean's loss. Additionally, when Kerry lost the general election, we spent the next four years explaining that young people did turn out beating a record high from 1992. In the end, it simply did not matter though, the media wrote the youth vote story and it was "young people are all hype, they say they will show up but don't."

Cynics and pundits are on message now. We did not hear many people last night blaming Obama's loss on young people and rather they were claiming it was young people who helped propel Clinton into victory. There may be something to that.

Obama has a wider youth campaign strategy and a broader youth movement happening right now which is why overall he has higher youth numbers. The Clinton campaign saw this and went after a group within the youth demographic they knew they could get-young professional women and working-class young people. Youth turnout overall jumped to 43% up from 18% in 2004.

Obama overwhelmingly got the 18-24 year old bloc (60% vs 22% for Clinton). The 18-29 year old bloc was split, with Clinton having a 2% advantage over Obama (37% Clinton, 35% Obama). If anything, the Clinton win gives the youth vote community an opportunity to tell the story that young people can and must be found on and off campus. Only about 25% of young people are in college, so if you want the youth vote you have to go where they live and where they hang out.

In last few days of the campaign, Clinton was able to appeal to working class young people with her message of Obama living in the clouds and she is working in the trenches. With this basic point, the Clinton campaign went after the 25-29 year old block.

We also can't overlook her moment of tears. Some will say it was contrived, but it seems women ages 25-29 looked at that as first time Clinton showed that politics is about passion, not just a job. Young women in this age group are working on their early careers, struggling with making it and probably have had moments like Clinton had in the coffee shop. They may have said to themselves "yeah, I know how that feels when you work your butt off, try your best and it doesn't seem to work out." So they gave her another shot with their votes.

The good news for young voters is both campaigns-and I would bet Edwards as well-are looking at how much they are investing in their youth programs. We will be watching how the candidates talk about young voters, talk to young voters and what their GOTV efforts look like in Nevada and South Carolina and leading into Super Tuesday.

Young voters now have to decide-are they "fired up" and "ready to go" or do they jump on the "experience" bus. At the very least, the campaigns will have to retool their youth programs to reach the youth communities in Nevada and South Carolina. South Carolina has a large African American population and Nevada has large Latino pollution two parts of the youth community that in 2004 voted in record numbers for Democrats. We are confident Democrats will win the youth vote, 80% of young people in Iowa and 61% in New Hampshire voted for Democrats. The only question we have is which Democrat will they go for?

Jane Fleming Kleeb is the Executive Director of the Young Voter PAC which helps Democratic candidates and State Parties win with the 18-35 year-old vote through endorsements, on-the-ground support, training, strategy and money. She is a regular on Fox and is part of MTV’s Street Team ‘08 representing Nebraska.

The Millennial Youth Vote Takes Center Stage

Literally. In Clinton’s victory speech last night, young Millennials filled the stage behind her. This was in striking contrast to her Iowa speech, in which she shared the stage with a crowd of older people from the 1990s, including Madeleine Albright right next to her.

Both Clinton and Obama are aggressively courting Millennials, both for their votes, and for their energized involvement in their campaigns. Millennials are not just voters, but actors. And actors who deeply understand the powerful new tools of politics on the Internet.

The early numbers out of new Hampshire show how clearing the youth vote is trending towards Democrats and becoming crucial to the two campaigns of the leaders. Here are some numbers from CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement:

Initial New Hampshire Youth Vote Numbers:

* The youth turnout rate rose to 37% in 2008 compared to 18% in 2004 and 28% in 2000.

* 61% of young voters ages 18-29 in New Hampshire chose Democrats over Republicans (raw numbers are Democrats 43,753, Republicans 28,288).

* Young people choosing Democrats over Republicans continues the trend we saw in Iowa where 52,580 caucused with Democrats and only 12,650 turned out for Republicans.

Among Democrats, 18-29 year olds outperformed older voters (CNN exit polling):

* 18-29 year old voters made up 18% of the New Hampshire Democratic primary.
* 30-39 year olds made up 15%.
* 65 and older voters made up 13%.

Young people were split between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (CNN exit polling):

* 18-24 year olds supported Barack Obama (61%) over Hillary Clinton (22%);
* 25-29 year olds supported Hillary Clinton (37%) over Barack Obama (34%);

This is all consistent with what we have been hammering at the New Politics Institute over the last couple years. For more info about what we have been putting out and saying, see a previous blog post explaining four of our key reports.

Peter Leyden
Director of the New Politics Institute

Our broken election system

There may be no greater example of the failure of leadership of the Bush era than that after the terrible experience of Florida in 2000 America still has a broken and unreliable election system. 

The Times magazine has a great piece which takes an indepth look at the problems we may face in the fall elections.

Last night the Democratic candidates, particularly Obama and Edwards, talked a great deal about making average every day people the focus of our politics.  Obama talked about the need for greater openness, transparency and accountability in our government.  But there should be little doubt that as the eventual Democratic nominee develops their "reform" agenda,they will need to put the bringing of greater integrity and openness to our electoral system at its very center.  It is not just a moral necessity, and one consistent with our values and tradition, but allowing the electoral system of the most powerful country in the world to be in question needs to be seen as a major national security concern as well. 

My hope is that our leaders will do more than insist on working voting machines, and look at things like same day voting registration, adopting a single national popular vote, weekend voting, more experiments with vote by mail and even potentially eliminating the need to register as additional reforms.  We simply have to make it easier to vote.   Voting should not be harder than getting a credit card in the US.  

There is much to do to clean up the mess of the Bush era.  Designing and building an American voting system for the 21st century needs to become one of the top priorities for candidates of both parties.

Techies and Geeks Tune into the Election

The giant Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week will devote one of its super sessions to “The Changing Face of America’s Elections,” though it’s really about the impact of new tech and new media on politics.

I will be one of the panelists on Monday discussing this with Grover Norquist, President for Americans for Tax Reform, and Dan Glickman, CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, among several others. It seems I will be holding up the more progressive end of how this technology is impacting the elections. Norquist and Charles Bass, CEO of Republican Main Street Partnership, will be holding up the other end.

The CES conference is a massive annual gatherings (among if not the biggest conference in the world.) It is where all the new tech products for the coming year are unveiled, and the tech tribe gathers to geek out on gadgets. However, it is a very important networking moment, and in the middle of it all this year, will be a discussion of politics.

If anyone in the NDN or NPI networks are in Las Vegas for this, come to the show on Monday morning, or ping me and we can connect.

Peter Leyden
Director of the New Politics Institute.

Millennials Behind the Obama Surge

If people still need evidence of the political impact of the young Millennial Generation on politics, look closely at the detailed results now coming out of Iowa. You could argue that Obama owes the thrust of his surge to the energized vote of Millennials.

Here are some initial statistics for youth (ages 18-29) turnout in Iowa, which come courtesy of the Young Voter PAC, and based on numbers coming out of CIRCLE, the Center for Information & research on Civic Learning & Engagement:

  • Young people made up 22% of the Democratic caucus goers, up from 17% in 2004. Young Democrats outnumbered young Republicans 4 to 1.
  • A total of 65,230 young people were caucus-goers in 2008. 52,580 caucused with Democrats and only 12,650 turned out for Republicans. That means of the young people that turned out, 80% were for Democrats.
  • The youth turnout rate tripled in Iowa. The youth turnout rate rose to 13% in 2008 compared to 4% in 2004 and 3% in 2000.
  • Out of all of Barack Obama’s support in Iowa, 57% came from young voters (CNN, MSNBC, FOX).
  • 60% of the caucus participants were first time caucus goers and of those 39% of them went for Obama.

The stats are even more remarkable because students are still on holidays in all the colleges around the state. And Iowa itself is demographically much older than many other states.

The New Politics Institute and NDN have been heralding this generation shift for the last couple years and teasing out the argument in various bits of information that would appear. The evidence has shown that this generation of young people, aged 29-11, are very engaged in politics, unusually civic-minded, hold progressive values and are voting for Democrats in high numbers. (Simon posted earlier on the various reports we have done on this subject.)

The Obama campaign recognizes this, and Obama himself has tapped into the energized idealism and optimism that this generation holds. Watch as this Millennial momentum just keeps growing through the primary season and onto the general election. This is a shift that will have a long tail of impact for many years to come. Political people who recognize it, and tap into it, will thrive. If you ignore it, like the Clinton campaign seemed to do, and you will get hurt.

Peter Leyden
Director of the New Politics Institute

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