Overall youth turnout low at Nev. caucuses
Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2008 @ 2:14 am
Candidates favored at UNR fail to rally majority support One year for one hour.
The caucuses have come and gone, leaving in their trails student clubs, untold candidate fliers and perhaps the most political attention in Nevada history.
The party nods ultimately went to Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Republican Mitt Romney. However, Nevada’s 25 Democratic and 31 Republican delegates aren’t bound to any candidate.
The delegates made no promises to support a specific candidate in the county or state caucuses, which will be held in the coming months. Theoretically, Romney could lose the majority of Republican delegates despite winning the presidential preference polls. Same with the Democrats.
Theory aside, if more youth caucused then Obama would have likely claimed initial victory, said Eric Herzik, a University of Nevada, Reno political science professor.
At UNR, Obama supporters dwarfed those from other camps. Obama actively reached out to youth more so than other Democrats. He is the only state-winning candidate from either party to visit UNR.
“The youth vote didn’t materialize,” said Herzik, a Republican and self-described cynic when it comes to youth voting. “He needed a bigger, better youth turnout.”
CNN reported that Obama reigned in 59 percent of Democratic caucus-goers between ages 18 and 29. But that demographic only made up 13 percent of participants statewide.
Only 5 percent of Nevada youth caucused for either side, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
Herzik said youth might not have participated for a number of reasons – the caucus would mean losing part of Saturday, the university wasn’t in session, apathy.
While no numbers exist on college student participation, some were impressed by turnout. Wolf Pack sweatshirts filled the Democratic precincts at UNR. Several students, Republican and Democrat, became delegates for their candidates. Some even ran their precinct’s caucus.
“I think right now the participation by young people is just staggering,” said Sandy Rodriguez, director of the Associated Students of Nevada and member-at-large in the Washoe County Democratic Party.
Rodriguez said about a third of student government members involved themselves with a campaign. Several senators worked with the Obama campaign or the student club. Speaker of the Senate Greg Green, a supporter of Republican Sen. John McCain, was voted a delegate.
Other students said they caucused out of a sense of duty.
“We have to vote,” Mike Carter, a 22-year-old political science major said. “We feel obligated.”
While the overall youth turnout was half that of those older than 30, participation in the caucus overwhelmed many organizers. Several precincts, Democrat and Republican, ran out of ballots or didn’t have enough room. Some students said the overall experience was negative, though they would do it again.
“It was absolutely disorganized and probably one of the worst election experiences I’ve had so far,” said Bryan Bedera, chairman of the state Republican Youth Majority, of his Reed High School precinct.
Rachel Miller, president of the UNR Young Democrats, said she ranted to her boyfriend after the caucus. She said her precinct captain at Sparks Middle School needed to count heads four times and fights for undecided participants turned to deceit.
“I’m a little disenfranchised by the whole process because it got kind of crazy,” she said.
Brittany Brown, a 21-year-old history major, said she got swept up in the political excitement the week before turning out. She said she saw Obama and Clinton speak the day before.
The three major Democrats spoke in Reno twice each. President Clinton also stumped for his wife, Hillary Clinton. The wife of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, took questions from a small crowd in the Joe Crowley Student Union. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, visited the downtown Peg’s Glorified Ham and Eggs Jan. 14.
During that time, Miller introduced Edwards before a speech. Rodriguez even sat next to Clinton while participating in a Reno economic forum.
“It’s probably the most intimidated I’ve ever been,” Rodriguez said. “Part of it was probably that I sat next to probably one of the most powerful senators in the United States. Part of it was just all the cameras that were staring.”
Rodriguez said interacting with the senator shed a more positive light on her, even though Rodriguez ended up supporting Obama in the caucus.
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January 22nd, 2008 at 10:15 am
I don’t think the percentage of youth voters has been accurately reported for a few reasons. Exit polling, to my knowledge, was not conducted at the majority of caucus location around the state, and certainly not at the University of Nevada. There were Sagebrush reporters at the caucuses, and it was very apparent that much much more than 13% of the caucus-goers there were college students.
Then, the paper version of this article states in a large red font only 5% of the total participants were 18-29, when in the article itself you give multiple figures. What troubles me is the headline. Youth voters turned out a lot more than I believe the media is giving them credit for. That misreporting makes it appears as if the youth vote is not important and will only hurt students in the future.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:36 am
Something that was completely left out of this article that is a very important fact is that over 116,000 people caucused for the Democratic Party and only 43,000 caucused for the Republican Party. The inclusion of this fact would have put perspective into the grave state of our nation and the need for a change in direction from failed Republican policies.
The statement that turn-out was “low” among youth voters is too general and gives no sense of the remarkable and humbling numbers of people who turned out for the event that occurred last Saturday, compared to other states/other elections, yes, turnout was low, but this is the first time that our caucus was in January, the first time we had the 2nd caucus in the nation, and the first time that anybody in the Nevada Democratic Party organized a caucus; but compared to the previous Presidential Caucus in Nevada, on February 14th, which only had 9,000 participants turnout was exceptionally high. Instead of being gloomy and cynical you, Nick Coltrain, should report more facts to put things in perspective, no event is a microcosm and I hope you learn this before your next article.
January 24th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
The fact that 116K people went to the Democratic caucuses proves nothing about “failed Republican policies” but the trite (and successful) Democratic policy to accept any and all dolts who bought the whiny Democratic ticket. As a voter who attended the caucus to support the principled John Edwards, it was a shame to see the “remarkable and humbling” number of Kool-Aid drinkers who were bullied into standing with Clinton and Obama propagandists, especially when they had just registered Democrat minutes before making an “informed” caucus decision.
If you forget the fact that the only Democratic voters allowed to caucus in our service industry economy were part of Clinton’s strategy to win the political machine in Las Vegas, then yes, perhaps Democrats truly did make a spectacular showing. In truth, though, Democrats and Republicans need to unite in the fact that there are “Proud Dems” and Proud Reps who would accept any candidate who can flatter Nevada for a week.