Will the Youth Vote Swing This Election?

As state deadlines pass, voter registration numbers are reaching record highs. The Associated Press estimated last week that nationwide there have been more than 9 million new registrations in the past six months, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans four to one. Get-out-the-vote groups that target young people are reporting unprecedented numbers of young voters added to the rolls. This week Rock the Vote, one of the largest nonpartisan GOTV organizations, surpassed 2.3 million registrations this election cycle.

"The numbers are staggering," said Andy Karsch, director of Rock the Vote's bus project, which has been touring around the country since September. Through its bus tour, Rock the Vote has secured more than 1 million new registrants in the past month alone. The Obama campaign would not give out specifics on the number of voters it had registered through its outreach effort, Vote for Change, but Chris Hughes, the campaign's director of online organizing, said that the website had been "hugely successful; it surpassed all our expectations. Almost everyone who came to the website followed through with the whole registration process." On a local level, a group called New Era Colorado has registered more than 11,000 voters, according to executive director Steve Fenberg. "The registration levels are enormous in Colorado," he said. "There's an excitement on the ground I've never seen before."

The number of newly registered Democrats eclipses Bush's margins of victory in swing states like Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. In North Carolina Democrats have registered twice as many voters as Republicans, helping to put the state in play. A big reason is the number of new young voters, 18- to 29-year-olds who favor Obama by upwards of twenty points.

Subscriber Login

User Name

Password

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.