Pundits were quick to point out that the percentage of Millennial voters (those 29 and younger ) in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections last week were roughly half of what they were in 2008. This led the voice of what passes for wisdom inside the Beltway, Charlie Cook, to proclaim, “we knew that young and minority voters who had never cast a ballot before they did for Barack Obama last year were very unlikely to show up at the polls this year or next.” His extrapolation of two state’s unique odd year election results into a guaranteed outcome in the 2010 general election is breathtaking for what it reveals about Cook’s own biases and those of his peers.

CIRCLE's new working paper, Spiral of Rebellion: Conflict Seeking of Democratic Adolescents in Republican Counties, "shows a striking pattern of Democratic youth thriving in political expression and debate when exposed to Republican ideological climates." The study compares Democratic adolescents to Republican adolescents, and further breaks down the comparison into those living in Democratic, balanced, and Red counties. They found that Democratic youth were more politically expressive than Republican youth, and that Democratic youth in Republican areas were more expressive than those living in blue or balanced areas. A couple findings of note:

To match the 62-59m recorded vote, Bush needed 51.1m of 93 million returning Bush and Gore Election 2000 voters. Kerry would have just 41.3m - a 9.8m spread. To just tie Kerry, Bush needed 6.8m more returning Bush and Gore voters. Bush needed 4.9m (10.5% of 46.7m) more Gore defectors than Bush defectors. But according to the 12:22am National Exit Poll, there was a net 2% defection to Kerry: 10% of Bush voters defected to Kerry and 8% of Gore voters defected to Bush - a 12.5% discrepancy from Bush's required 10.5% net defection rate. Given the 90-10% vote split, the exit poll margin of error was 1% for the 3168 respondents who were asked how they voted in 2000. So how did Bush do it?

Young people prefer progressive ideas, the reject the traditional party structure and tend to identify as more independent. They have much more progressive values. McDonnell's campaign focused on things like infrastructure, energy, and education. He did youth outreach. I don't know if Deeds did, but the consistent narrative around the Deeds campaign was that he wasn't really for anything. The additional narrative I hear is that VA isn't that democratic. This doesn't mean young voters have gone GOP, it means that when you put forth the effort to get young voters, you speak to their issues, and you get out the vote you get a good result.

Despite the chatter from the punditry, yesterday was a big day for Millennials. While they focus on two races with candidates that ignored the youth vote and wonder why turnout did not match 2008's all time high, a number of young people won local elections throughout the country. In New York, Young Democrats of America Democratic National Committeewoman Stephanie Hausner was the highest vote getter in her election to the Clarkstown Town Council. Former NYSYD National Committeeman David Carlucci won re-election as Clarkstown Town Clerk. Two former New York Young Democrats local chapter leaders, Dan French and David Fried, won local elections as well.

Watching election returns last night proved to be a very interesting evening. What became consistent was the impact of the lack of outreach on the youth segment of the electorate and the diminished rate of enthusiasm. In Virginia “Only 1,973,868 of a total 4,955,755 voters participated in the gubernatorial race — “a miniscule number when you consider there were 3.7 million voters in the 2008 election,” said Isaac Wood, assistant communications director at the University Center for Politics… He added that generally one-third of Virginia voters in presidential elections choose not to participate in gubernatorial elections, and that, as such, yesterday’s voter turnout was even lower than usual.” One difference this year than in 2008 was young voters had a candidate at the top of the ticket who actively sought their vote. This isn’t generally the standard in other elections, despite our efforts to teach candidates otherwise. Outreach is so important, asking young people for their vote is key, and peer to peer outreach is a must. All of these things happened nation wide in 2008, in large part because the Obama campaign placed a high importance on getting out the vote for young people.

Well, today is election day and there are several important races destined to be determined. I have read several articles in various blogs and newspapers, raising the question of "where are the Millennials and will they vote?" I fear "disengaged" youth will be to blamed for election day turnout (or lack there of). But what people have yet to learn is how to engage the youth in a empowering and meaningful way, Obama did it successfully, but others have not yet gotten the message. Paradoxically, members of Generation We are not quick to claim for themselves the mantle of being particularly active or politically engaged, even though they are, in fact, among the most involved young people in history. In our focus groups, many Millennials criticized their own generation as being “apathetic” or “materialistic.” There are a number of possible explanations for this paradox.

Between 2004 and 2008 progressive youth organizations were building a strategy and infrastructure to turn out young voters and engage them in issue advocacy outside of elections. Major progressive donors seemed to realize the latent power of the youth vote and the need to catch up with the conservative funding machine that supports conservative youth.

"An Alaska businessman admitted to giving gifts to Republican Rep. Don Young, the state's long-serving sole congressman, in a confession made public this week as part of an ongoing federal investigation into political corruption in the state. ... Since early 2007, Young, 76, has spent more than $1.2 million on lawyers -- with money from his legal expense fund and his campaign account -- in connection with federal investigations of his fundraising and other matters."

When we started getting data back regarding precisely how many people we registered actually voted, we were pretty thrilled to learn that about three quarters of youth indeed pulled the lever on Nov. 3rd 2008. We were even more excited when an independent organization studied the voter registration work of 25 different organizations, and HeadCount had some of the best stats in all the key measurements. Pretty impressive for an organization that receives little funding and relies almost entirely on volunteers.

Jose Antonio Vargas writes for the Huffington Post: Voters under 30 continue to overwhelmingly support the president, polls show. No surprise, then, that polls also show them backing Obama's health care reform, including the public option plan. "There's been a missed opportunity here in showcasing the kind of youthful, optimistic, hopeful energy that greatly Obama benefited from during the campaign," said Morley Winograd, a fellow at the Democratic think-tank NDN and co-author of the seminal book "Millennial Makeover," an analysis of how the wired and online networked Millennial Generation is impacting politics. "But of course it does not at all mean that the opportunity has gone away."

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation, AB 30, allowing the pre-registration of 17-year-olds in the state of California. The state joins seven others that allow pre-registration at either 17 or 16. Matthew Segal from the Student Association for Voter Empowerment said "I think pre-registration is a major step in the right direction because it helps institutionalize voter registration, said matthew segal. If implemented at DMVs it will also be essential in reaching many young people who are not college bound." SAVE supports replicating what we've done in California federally with a bill we are currently working with FairVote and Congressman Markey's office to introduce."

In her first outreach event to the Millennial Generation, former Kansas Governor now Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will answer questions by young voters on upcoming health care reform legislation, how the HHS is doing outreach to young people, and what options for young people who continued to be uninsured. Sebelius was unable to the 80 Million Strong for Youth Jobs summit in July which discussed at length the staggering unemployment rate for Millennials and the over 1/3 of uninsured youth. But former US Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle spoke at length about health care reform. Daschle identified 3 main problems with today's system

Forget Olympia Snowe; pass the right healthcare bill, and voters will reward you.

Guest blogger Morley Winograd, author of Millennial Makeover, writes "The latest unemployment numbers and poll results have led most observers to predict a major setback for Democrats in the 2010 Congressional elections. But a year is a lifetime in politics and much can change between now and then to influence next year’s vote. As Ron Brownstein recently pointed out, the demographic makeup of the electorate is likely to be a key factor in whether or not the Democrats can maintain their current majority margins in 2010. While traditionally Democrats have focused on turning out African-American and Hispanic voters to offset Republican strength among white male voters that equation is no longer the only calculation Democratic strategists need to make."

Abstract of Professor Dreier's report that Rachel mentions: Manipulating the Public Agenda: Why ACORN Was in the News, and What the News Got Wrong FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Peter Dreier, E.P Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and Urban & Environmental Policy Program director, Occidental College, (323) 259-2913, dreier@oxy.edu Christopher Martin, professor of journalism, UNI Department of Communication Studies, (319) 273-7155, martinc@uni.edu Note: Read “Manipulating the Public Agenda: Why ACORN Was in the News, and What the News Got Wrong” online at http://www.uepi.oxy.edu/acornstudy Accurate reporting sidelined as mainstream media repeats allegations of Republican Party operatives and politicians Recently released study finds widespread inaccuracy in the reporting of an alleged “voter fraud” scandal involving ACORN CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — An independent study by two prominent academics, released this week, found repetition of unverified allegations and distortions was the rule in national reporting of a purported “voter fraud” scandal involving the community organizing group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) during the 2008 presidential campaign.

As many know the Value Voters Summit has run all weekend and ends today. While it is interesting to note what these voters were speaking out against, abortion, healthcare for all, homosexuality and President Obama, it is curious to note what these "Conservative Christians" left out. You see, in a way we are all "values voters" we just have different values we fight for.

One of the youngest prisoners released from Guantánamo Bay plans to sue the US Government for compensation for arresting him in Kabul as a minor and detaining him for seven years, his lawyer said yesterday. Mohammed Jawad was captured in December 2002 when, he says, he was 12, on suspicion of having thrown a grenade into a Jeep carrying US special forces soldiers through Kabul, wounding two of them and an interpreter. He was held at the US airbase at Bagram, north of Kabul, and transferred in 2003 to Guantánamo Bay, where he spent the next six years.

Klein might have missed the analysis by Stu Rothenberg, which Mike blogged about last month, that basically calls for "Democrats to maintain the interest of the youth vote and African Americans." (The constituents who brought the excitement, energy and the votes to the Obama campaign.)

One of the panels I attended at Netroots Nation was Repairing our Democracy: Voter Registration Modernization and other Solutions with speakers Secretary Debra Bowen California's Secretary of State, Dean Logan the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk for Los Angeles County (the nation’s largest county), Jonah Goldman a national expert on voting and elections, and Justin Levitt counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. The panel was also moderated by Eric Marshall, campaign manager for the National Campaign for Fair Elections in the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law's Voting Rights Project. Highly knowledgeable experts on the panel seemed to develop the consensus that the system is broken. "We must have a system of error correction that is speedy enough so that people aren't disenfranchised and the error is corrected," Secretary Bowen said.