The Black Republican

Jack C. Doppelt proposes in the Chicago Sun-Times that this election has potential to be startling, because young people - for the last 20 years thought to be the great black hole of political activism because of the aftermath of Watergate and Vietnam - might suddenly awaken and turn out to vote.

Young voters are off the radar screen of campaign pollsters. Almost all polls screen for either registered voters or likely voters. Likely voters are some combination of those who say they're likely to vote, have voted before and know where their polling place is. That's not the core, young, traditional nonvoter, who also moves around a lot and uses cell phones that are not part of the random digit dialing system used by pollsters.

I agree, and this fits with what I've been saying for months. But alas, one isn't necessarily surrounded by a balanced worldview in journalism school, where Mr. Doppelt is a professor.

That is not to say that what happens in the campaign doesn't feed and nourish the buzz. It does. The buzz is Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11"; Jon Stewart's "Daily Show"; Al Franken's Air America; Bill Maher's "Real Time"; the daily stream of concert tours, particularly Punk Voter's Rock Against Bush and the Vote For Change tour associated with Bruce Springsteen, both targeted for battleground states only; Leno, Letterman and other talk shows, and a half dozen movies and documentaries.

Liberalism, liberalism, followed by liberalism. That these are all in the mix is undeniable, but is the buzz from young people favoring Michael Moore, or are they buzzing that "the old fat fart lies"? People are talking about Al Franken, but do they agree with him, or do they laugh that no one's listening? (It's telling that Mr. Doppelt lives in an area that actually has a station that carries Mr. Franken.) Do America's youth today really listen to Bruce Springsteen? (Barely half my class in New Jersey could tolerate the guy in the 80's, when he was actually relevant.)

So how will young voters actually vote? The Pew Poll gives us a little insight:

Over the past month, young voters have displayed significantly more volatility in their candidate preference than most other groups in the population. In Pew's most recent poll, President Bush leads John Kerry by a margin of 48% to 42% among registered voters 18-29. Just a week earlier, Kerry led by 53% to 35% among this group. And two polls earlier in September found the same pattern of shifting support. In fact, young voters have moved in the same direction as the overall trends in the polls, but their swings have been more extreme than the rest of population. In 2000, Gore and Bush ran about even among young people (Gore 48%, Bush 46%), according to exit polls by the Voter News Service.

Young, impressionable, uncertain. And remember, these numbers are registered voters, so not all of those surveyed are likely to vote. How can we divine how they'll eventually swing?

They'll stick with Bush. I'll bet Mr. Doppelt hasn't heard of the Roe Effect.