Midterm election enthusiasm being lost on the young
In the end, it’s all about turnout.
President Barack Obama has been trying to rev up young voters, who played a strong role in his own election, to encourage them show up at the polls on Election Day through appearances on MTV, next week’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” and an interview with “Rolling Stone” magazine.
But a Harvard University poll of voters under age 30 finds midterm enthusiasm waning as the Nov. 2 election approaches.
“In most election cycles, it is expected that interest in voting will increase as the election draws near — in the 2010 midterm elections, interest in voting among Millennials (18-29 year olds) has been decreasing over the course of our last three surveys,” the report says.
A bar graph shows that in the October survey 27 percent of young Americans said they would definitely vote in the midterms, down from 36 percent last November.
There’s been a lot of chatter about the enthusiasm gap that shows more Republicans than Democrats saying they are likely to vote in this election. But what about the generation gap?
David Paul Kuhn of RealClearPolitics has an interesting piece on older voters set for historic turnout that says: ”The young always receive more political attention than the old, though the old generally shape elections more than the young. That trend is exaggerated in midterm elections. Seniors 2006 turnout rate, 63 percent, was more than twice the youth rate.”
White House adviser says Obama to energize his base for November
President Barack Obama adds a new item to his first-term to-do list: energize his most loyal supporters in a national get-out-the-vote campaign for the November congressional midterm elections.
That’s the message Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett delivered on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where she predicted a robust White House campaign to encourage voters including blacks and Hispanics to get to the polls next month.
Obama has already been out trying to stir up enthusiasm among the younger voters. But that was just for starters.
“He’s going to be energizing his base. He’s going to be energizing the entire country to come out and participate in this election,” Jarrett said.
“The president may not be on the ballot. But it’s very important that everybody come out and vote and that will be his message going forward.” Democrats hope to limit the loss of House and Senate seats in an election widely expected to yield Republican gains.
Some Democratic incumbents have sought to save their jobs by distancing themselves from the president and some of his more unpopular programs including healthcare reform. But analysts say Obama could help compensate for Republican strengths among white and independent voters by reaching out to voting blocs that enthusiastically supported him in 2008 and convincing them to come out to the polls on Election Day. A Gallup poll released on Monday showed that the president’s GOTV campaign may face challenges with some segments of its intended audience, however. Obama’s approval ratings stand at 91 percent among blacks, 79 percent among Democrats and 75 percent among liberals. But Hispanic’s give him only a 55 percent approval rating, according to findings based on interviews with 15,200 adults conducted Sept 1-30 in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The results have a 1 percentage point error margin. The presidential approval rating was 47 percent among women and 54 percent among moderates. Obama’s overall approval rating has firmed a bit from an August low of 44 percent — but only to 45 percent. Gallup says Obama’s overall approval rating is similar to midterm results of Democrat Bill Clinton (45 percent) and Republican Ronald Reagan (42 percent), whose parties suffered substantial congressional losses at the same juncture in their presidencies.
Photo credits: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama); Reuters/Denis Balibouse (Jarrett); Reuters/Jim Young (Obama supporters).
its good to see that hispanics are waking up to Barry the liar. it is a shame to see his support rate amoung blacks @ 91%.
How blind blacks are to the political process. Name one other race who so blindly follows one political party. Whites, hispanics, all races came out in droves to vote for Barry and even now people play the card…
And I dare you to play that card, you know what i mean…
Meg Whitman’s Facebook ad nets 20,000 clicks — and a message about jobs
Republican Meg Whitman’s campaign says the results are in from her innovative Facebook “polling ads,” which asked Californians to choose the issue most important to them. The message came back loud and clear: Jobs.
The Whitman campaign said its poll, which ran from July 27 to July 31, drew 20,000 Facebook respondents — with 42 percent of them saying that jobs were their number one priority in the 2010 governor’s race. Not surprising at all in a state with double-digit unemployment.
Another 32 percent voted for fixing education in California, with 26 percent saying that cutting state spending was most critical. Whitman, who has said that putting Californians back to work is the number one goal of her campaign, released the poll results in a Facebook video.
Whitman’s campaign says she is the first to use polling ads on Facebook, which engage users more than traditional TV or Internet spots and target those often elusive younger voters.
And while Whitman and Democrat Jerry Brown slug it out in their race for governor in 2010, the blogosphere has been abuzz with rumors that at least one potential candidate, Representative Loretta Sanchez, is already thinking about 2014.
The source of the speculation is a report in the Sacramento Bee newspaper that Sanchez, a Democrat representing the 47th congressional district, has filed paperwork that would allow her to raise money for a 2014 gubernatorial bid.
“With over 2 million unemployed Californians, even Rep. Loretta Sanchez knows that Jerry Brown doesn’t have a plan to turn around California and that it’s time to abandon his campaign,” the Republican National Committee said in an emailed statement. “Rep. Sanchez has just reminded her constituents that she cares more about her own political ambitions than working to create jobs and improve the economy.”
Meg Whitman breaks new virtual ground with Facebook ‘polling’ ads
In 2010 a candidate would be ill-advised to ignore the Internet, especially if he or she wants to reach younger voters who aren’t paying attention to more traditional campaigns — or, even worse, are tuning out politics entirely.
And Republican Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO who is running for California governor against Democrat Jerry Brown, certainly isn’t the first candidate to advertise on Facebook in hopes of tapping into its nearly 500 million users.
But Whitman’s campaign says she has become the first political candidate to use “polling ads” on Facebook — or spots that engage users, asking them to decide which issues they want to hear the candidate address.
Campaign spokeswoman Sarah Pompei says the first polling ad went live last night, popping up on the Facebook pages of Californians over 18 and asking them to choose one of three issues facing California: creating jobs, cutting state spending or fixing education.
When the votes are tallied in about a week, she said, Whitman will address it in a videotaped speech to the Facebook audience.
“The Facebook ads play an important role in our strategy to build community support and engage younger voters in the campaign,” Pompei said. “We’re using these innovative campaign tools to build the groundswell of support for Meg’s agenda, and this is just the latest example.”
Well I can say that Meg is getting me to do something I swore I would never do after the whole Gray Davis debacle which is vote for a democrat. I could never in good conscious vote for someone that didn’t even bother to vote for 28 years. Someone that will give illegal immigrants privileges that most Californian’s can’t even get. As for jobs get serious why would I trust someone that outsourced jobs to another country when they ran Ebay. Oh not to mention the fact she has ZERO respect for the United States Constitution.
Hawaiian ‘shaka’ greeting comes natural to Obama
KAILUA, HI – Barack Obama may be the first U.S. president who can successfully pull off the shaka, a Hawaiian greeting Hawaiians say has various meanings, from “hang loose” and “cool” to “thanks.” The hand gesture, also a common greeting in surfer culture, consists of curling the three middle fingers and extending the thumb and little finger. The president-elect, looking uber-cool with his White Sox baseball cap on backwards, flipped the shaka to a crowd of about 30 people as he left a gym on a Marine Corps base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where he is vacationing. Obama, born and largely raised on Oahu, then walked over to greet the crowd, which had waited through a brief cloudburst to see him. Righting his baseball cap as he walked, he shook hands before posing with four babies.
People here are missing the point. We’re arguing that the media is not being the media. Have they even analyzed Obama’s plans or how he’s going to lead? What about what Obama has done for Illinois? You know, like a journalist for Reuters is supposed to do?
Journalistic integrity is dead in this country.
Obama leaves no stone unturned, hits up MTV audience
WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama may be in the lead in the polls, but he’s leaving little to chance especially among younger voters.
He went on MTV to answer questions from young voters ranging from student loans and taxes to gay marriage and whether ordinances should be passed prohibiting sagging pants — yes sagging pants.
“I think people passing a law against people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time. We should be focused on creating jobs, improving our schools, health care, dealing with the war in Iraq,” Obama said.
But he added: “Having said that, brothers should pull up their pants. You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. What’s wrong with that? Come on.”
MTV said his Republican rival John McCain was offered a similar opportunity to answer questions from young voters, but he declined.
Obama also tried to explain his remark about taxes and spreading the wealth around that came out during his conversation with Joe the Plumber and was lampooned by McCain.
He argued that he proposed returning tax rates back to what they were in the 1990s for those making over $250,000 a year, a move of about 3 percentage points, and that would not limit their success.
My only hope is that for every election of every democracy the voter turn out increases to atleast 80%, thats the dream of a sucessful nation