Here is the article.
It's written by a poli sci professor from Drake. Here are some of his concluding thoughts:
If Obama is seen as effective in putting us back on the path to prosperity, if he can organize and govern as creatively and effectively as he campaigned, the loyalties developed during this campaign could build a political base of support for the Democrats to draw upon for decades.You can sound off on what you think by commenting below...
6 comments:
I believe that younger voters are tied to Obama. Many saw him as the candidate of their generation. Some may even view him as a sort of political savior. However how Obama performs in the next four or even eight years will determine whether or not he would create party loyalty like FDR did for those who grew up during the great depression and World War 2.
I believe young Obama voters were tied to Obama for a couple of reasons but probably the biggest factor is the amount of advertising his campaign had. I think his campaign were genius for putting ads on Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Titter, etc. because so many people, mostly younger, use these social networks. I believe his exposure on these sites is what got him the majority of the younger vote. It goes along with what we were talking about in class. Most younger voters dont seek information they let it come to them.
Obama's campaign was largely based on emotion. He is a powerful speaker and a exemplifies the qualities of a great leader. Younger people are more prone to rally around his emotional appeal. Older voters would be more likely to be skeptical of a man promoting change. McCain lacks the personable and stern qualities that Obama displays so confidently. I thought it was risky that the word "Change" was used predominantly in Obama's campaign, but the criticism of our nation's current situation by mass media also played a role in attracting younger voting participants in Obama's favor
I agree the "generational" candidate idea has merit. We saw this a few years ago with the "youth" ticket of Clinton/Gore vs. the elder Bush; it attracted a good amount of young voters to that campaign (Perot also helped, as younger voters also tend to be more independent!).
Many scholars have also tracked Obama's use of new technologies; the McCain camp was a bit behind overall in using these new tools.
Jason's note is very interesting, in that the "Change" mantra very well could have backfired (or at least not been that powerful) for Obama if the economy hadn't taken a big downturn in late 2008. The economy as an issue may have been second to terrorism/security in that case, as it was in 2004...
I think the youth vote is directly connected to President Obama for at least the next four years and the next eight unless he does something catastrophic to his image. In contrast i think his popularity will only last a maximum of the eight years and most of the youth vote will flip flop between party affiliations for a couple of campaigns but will eventually find and stick with a certain affiliation in 12 years. to sum up i think Obamas following will last for eight years then will leave. but i feel it will come back and stay democratic after one or two elections after obama leaves office.
Obama did market to the younger generation and so many young people new more about him than they did other candidates. I would say that most vote on the amount of information they have about one candidate and the most information that I saw for any candidate came from Obama. I'm not sure that we are tied to Obama but we just knew more about him to make our decsision based on what we knew.
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