Moved-up Iowa caucuses could hinder youth vote
Iowa's January 3 caucus date leaves youth vote out of the 2008 picture.
DES MOINES -- Democrat Barack Obama is generating palpable excitement on Iowa campuses. But he's up against both history and new challenges as he tries to turn that energy into votes in the state's leadoff presidential caucuses.
In 2004, according to the state Democratic Party, only 3.9% of 124,000 Democratic caucus participants were age 18 to 24. And that was for Jan. 19 caucuses. This time they are on Jan. 3, when virtually all Iowa colleges are on winter break.
"It's clearly an untapped resource," Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin says of the youth vote. "Many candidates have believed that their path to victory in Iowa was to vastly expand the universe of caucus participants and bring in new people, particularly young people. It hasn't quite worked out before."
The crestfallen of yesteryear include Bill Bradley in 2000 and Howard Dean in 2004. This time around, says Alec Schierenbeck, 20, a Grinnell College junior who heads Iowa College Democrats, candidates are making "unprecedented efforts" to organize young people. It's easier than ever, he adds, because of "indispensable" social networking websites such as Facebook.
Besides Obama, those in the hunt include Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, Democratic New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former North Carolina senator John Edwards, also a Democrat. Several national polls show Clinton with a plurality of younger voters among Democratic candidates; she splits them evenly with Obama in at least one. But most polls measure a group aged 18 to 30, so it's hard to discern student preferences.
It's even harder to gauge the situation in Iowa, shaping up as a crucial contest for both Obama and Edwards. A frequent way to identify a likely caucus-goer is someone who's caucused before — but most students aren't old enough to have done that.
A Rassmussen Reports poll last month found that 40% of Iowa Democrats age 18 to 29 went for Clinton and 23% chose Obama — but the sample was only 81 people. The margin of error is plus or minus about 12 percentage points.
