Sunday, November 1, 2009

Will Students come out to vote on November 3rd?

Here's a picture of Jody Wagner posing with college students. President Obama was able to court the support of young voters in his victory over John McCain in 2008, but was that just a special case? Turnout in mid-term elections are much lower than Presidential, and Virginia has elections that are even more out of sync with the federal election schedule. College students are bombarded with at least as many advertising messages as the general public, are frequently in class and/or intoxicated, have to deal with absentee balloting, and feel their issues aren't addressed. Given those things, it's not a surprise they don't vote in high numbers.
Now Jody Wagner has 4 kids, some of whom are voting age and would fall into the age cohort "millenial." Jody clearly exudes a "mom" type vibe. Both of these work to her advantage with young voters. There's supposedly been a big downswing of enthusiasm since last year's election, but I'm not sure that will translate into a downswing of turnout among 18-24 year old voters. Most voters in that range only use a cell phone and, no matter how many pollsters and political scientists I talk to, I'm still not persuaded they're correctly surveying that group. If there's going to be a surprise on election night, I predict it will be in student turnout. If some races get really close, they will be the group that determines the winner.

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