American Forum

Young voters vote is always up for grabs unanimously agreed the American Forum panelists. An hour-long panel interaction between the guests and the audience clarified that both parties, democrats and republicans, largely depend on the votes of the youth.

Karen Finney, an independent political analyst and former communications director at the Democratic National Committee, and Kevin Madden, republican strategist who served as Senior Communications Strategist for Governor Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2008 were the guests of the American Forum at the American University in Washington, D.C.

“When you go out there and vote you do make a difference,” said Finney to the millennial generation audience. Learned from the 2008 presidential elections, Finney does not trust poles. Early voting changes the dynamics of the poles and young voters tend to make up their mind on Election Day, said Finney. In 2008, the turnout of the youth voters exceeded the expectations, as reported by Amanda Ruggeri in the article Young Voters Powered Obama`s Victory While Shrugging Off Slacker Image, “They made up a higher proportion of the electorate—18 percent—than the 65-and-older age category, which accounted for 16 percent.”

“We used to be better at getting young voters votes,” said Madden about GOP. Madden referred to the 1990`s and early 2000`s when republicans were able to attract much more young voters. Kristen Soltis in the article The Vanishing Young Republicans wrote that in 2004 election “democrats only had a 2 point advantage among young voters.”

“The Youth vote in 2008 was 1% bigger than in 2004, but margin between Democrats and Republicans was 2:1,” said Madden. This data finds its support in the Soltis` article either:

“According to the EMR exit polls at the presidential level, in 2008, 45% of voters 18-29 identified as Democrats while only 27% identified as Republicans.”

Besides talking about youth voters and up-coming elections, Finney and Madden were focused on Obama`s declining approval rating. The panelists kept going back to the discussion of the President Obama`s administration, despite the fact that the main purpose of the forum was to talk about young voters and the mid-term election. “Obama lost independent voters,” said Madden. Mr. Madden shared his knowledge of Obama`s rating changes. “In 2008, President Obama was very popular with the young voters,” said Finney. Obama`s campaign found the way to reach the youth using technology. Finney said that the internet, facebook in particular, was the main tool for Obama to get the young voters` attention.

“I liked the forum. It was not general,” said Jessica Marcella, a freshman at American University. Although lots of people who followed the forum online did not express their approval of the flow of the panel, some students found the forum informative and relative to its topic.