2005 Alliance State-Wide Model

2004 marked an increase in the youth vote and an end to a 30-year decline of young people showing up at the voting booths. What was the difference in 2004? Youth groups decided to get partisan and conduct peer-to-peer voter contact projects. Never before did groups talk with their peers about why it was important to vote for Democrats over Republicans. YDA was at the forefront of this trend in youth voting.

The purpose of implementing and evaluating the state-wide program was to build a model that organizations, candidates, State Parties and the DNC can use as part of the long-term infrastructure building. Currently State Party leaders and the DNC need serious education on the possibility of the youth vote. Most (93%) local Party leaders think their state can make a big difference in getting young people involved, yet only 8% identify young people as a demographic for the “long term success of the Party. ” Additionally, most State Parties have no youth mobilization plan, funding or staff.

In the national model, we used issues as the heart of discussions with our peers. We pointed out that the Democrats were doing a better job on those issues, but we did not mention any candidates by name. In the state model, we continued to talk to our peers about issues, but also talked about specific candidates. The various literature created is part of the tests we implemented and results will be available in April 2006.

We knew it was critical to stay on an issue-based message because 92% of first-time voters in the 2004 election cited issues as their driving force to vote. However, we also needed to further explore and test how to turn young people’s dislike of Bush into long-term voting patterns because two-thirds of the first-time voters also said they voted in part “because I really disliked one of the candidates .”

Since it is critical to reach the rural, suburb and exurb voters in Virginia, YDA had full teams in 4 diverse areas of Virginia, not just the urban cities. Nationally, the staff was an Executive Director and a Finance Director.

YDA set out to create a young voter persuasion campaign in Virginia, called the Alliance, building upon the lessons learned in the 2004 peer-to-peer model . Without a doubt, that goal was met. Additionally, the Democratic candidate for Governor won with a wider margin than the 2001 candidate did; and various Democratic insiders have credited women and young people for the win.

YDA ran the peer-to-peer voter contact program in 61 precincts in 4 diverse regions of Virginia contacting more than 67,000 young people .

YDA’s efforts focused on the 4 areas of Virginia with high concentrations of young people; Northern Virginia, Charlottesville, Harrisonburg and Tidewater.

The state-based staff structure included a Field Director who managed 4 Regional Coordinators. The Regional Coordinators managed Team Leaders who in turn managed the canvassers and street teams.

There were over 30 paid canvassers and 50 volunteers who put in over 1,400 hours of talking to their peers about voting for Democrats up and down the ballot in the 2005 elections.

In our targeted precincts, we saw an increase ranging from 2-12% of turnout for Democrats from 2001 to 2005.

The Virginia YDA President and the YDA Executive Director served at the Virginia America Votes and the Virginia Coordinated tables in order to build long-term partnerships. YDA continues to be the only youth groups represented on the national America Votes table and was the only one at the Virginia America Votes table as well.

Once the Virginia State Board of Elections releases age breakdown of the votes (ready apx in late March 2006), YDA’s evaluator Dave Nickerson will run the results of the four controlled experiments YDA ran in this election cycle.

By combining traditional methods of voter contact such as door-to-door canvassing, with non-traditional methods such as talking to young people where they hang out, YDA has found a method to identify and contact young voters in a systematic manner.

The YDA peer-to-peer model postulates that young voters are more likely to respond to a peer in their own age group, cultural demographic and social setting. YDA’s voter model has the potential to change the culture of campaigns in how they contact young voters and view young people.

YDA implemented an extensive evaluation program as part of the model and carefully tracked the number and types of contacts being made with young voters. This in-depth review of the data and methods YDA employs will assist with the goal of building a sustainable and reliable voting block of young people. This information will also provide the needed hard data to prove that young people can win elections for Democrats.

Reaching out to 35 and under voters in any state or on a national level continues to come with an assortment of challenges and unique circumstances because of the mobility of young people and the “newness” of young people being contacted by partisan political efforts. It is clear that what made the Alliance program so successful was our ability to adapt our strategy to the specific needs of each region. Charlottesville, Harrisonburg, Norfolk, and Northern Virginia provided us with the benefit of discovering the strengths and weaknesses of different organizing approaches in different types of communities.