Youth Vote. Harder but more important than ever.

The New York Times’ recent story on college students and the President has a few problems. The most serious is that the article takes the exact wrong approach in going to students who worked for Obama in 2008 and asking them what they planned to do in 2012. This misses the crucial point that over a four-year span almost no young person is doing the same things he or she was doing at the beginning. College freshmen have very different concerns from college seniors. Yet, the article’s main point should be underscored -- pure enthusiasm will not carry Obama and the Democrats to victory. We need to replace enthusiasm with organization, and we need a plan for how we’re going to do it. Obviously some enthusiasm will return as we get closer to election day but it still will take more effort to get each additional young voter to the polls this time than last. This effort has never been more important.  If you drill down in the most recent Public Policy Polling, you will find that Obama leads his closest challenger Mitt Romney by a massive 66% to 25% among young voters --larger even than his margin in 2008.