On the eve of the DE Republican Convention, we should note that it turns out that 7 years of the Worst.President.Ever. has the amazing side benefit of creating new, young Democratic voters. A new poll from Pew shows that the previous CW about Dems having a slight advantage among younger voters (18-29 year olds) may be shifting considerably. Younger voters ID themselves as Dems by a 58-33 margin (25 points), while in 2004 the margin was 51-40 (11 points).
And it looks as though the last time there was such a big spread in young voter identification was when Nixon was President.
These new,young Dems are not only getting involved with campaigns in record numbers, but they are also turning out to vote in numbers that continue to confound the CW. Another piece of possible good news here is that people tend to form their brand preferences early and Dems have another rare opportunity to capture these votes for the long term.
The other thing that strikes me about these numbers and Obama’s ramp up of a major voter registration effort is that there is still plenty of untapped voter energy out there, and he this might be one of his closing arguments with the superdelegates.
Do you want to run or have Dem colleagues run with somebody who will spend a good bit of his own campaign funds on helping to bring in new voters in every state or run with the usual 50% +1 which turns back the clock on many newly thriving local Dem organizations? If I was a superdelegate, this long-term party investment by a candidate would be a compelling argument. Kerry raised more money than anyone expected and I don’t remember him spending much of it on party-building. In fact, I think all of that was outsourced to the 501(c)3s. I can’t remember a Dem Presidential candidate making this kind of offer — can you?