Wednesday, September 05, 2012

ELECTION 2012 - Youth Vote?

"Will the Youth Vote, Crucial to Obama's Reelection, Actually Go to the Polls?" PBS Newshour 9/4/2012

Excerpt

RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): For the Obama campaign to work, it needs young people, as volunteers, as voters. People under 30 are crucial.

In 2008, two of every three voters under 30 cast a vote for candidate Obama, making it the largest gap between old and young voters since 1972. Younger voters are more racially and ethnically diverse than the general population and a lot more secular, and those are two big markers for affinity for the Democratic Party.

But they're also a lot more unemployed. And that represents a big challenge for the Obama campaign. In last month's jobs report, unemployment for 20- to 24-year-olds stood at 13.5 percent.

Millions of young voting age students aren't yet in the full-time work force on college campuses -- 100,000 college Democrats on 1,200 campuses are headed by this Alejandra Salinas, who heads to law school in the fall.

No comments: