Kindred candidate
Young people united to get Obama elected
By Lisa D. Welsh TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
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Thursday, November 6, 2008
WORCESTER —
Part Super Bowl bash, part New Year’s Eve celebration, Tuesday night’s
off-campus party at Dan Sitcovsky’s apartment on Charlotte Street was
packed with excited election-night revelers.
Most attending the Clark University senior’s fete had been actively
involved in the presidential campaign, holding signs, registering other
students, staffing phone banks and attending debates and rallies. No
one was allowed into the party without voting.
Mr. Sitcovsky, 21, said he has been following Barack Obama ever
since watching him give a speech two years ago that was posted online.
“The reason I love Obama is he thinks everything through,” he said.
About 40 students at the party crowded around two television sets
and switched between “Indecision 2008” on Comedy Central, CNN’s
Anderson Cooper and poll reports on MSNBC. When it was reported Barack
Obama had received California’s 55 electoral votes, guaranteeing him
the presidency, the room erupted into cheering and hugging and a
champagne-swilling exhibition of joy.
The students were among the record-breaking turnout of between 22
million and 24 million young voters, 18- to 29-year-olds, who cast a
ballot. “This is a history-making election and I think we feel it,”
said Samantha Blank, 21, who is also a senior at Clark. “Barack Obama
is young and he’s like us. I think we relate to him more.”
Throughout the campaign, the youth vote was courted by candidates
like never before, but some wondered if they would vote on Election
Day.
“The vote lived up to the hype,” said Scott Keeter, director of
survey research of the Washington D. C.-based Pew Research Center. Mr.
Keeter was an election-night analyst of exit polls for NBC News, as he
has been in every election since 1980.
“They certainly delivered the strong pro-Democratic and pro-Obama
vote that all the pre-polling showed they would,” said Mr. Keeter. “The
margin of the young vote was 2 to 1.”
According to Pew’s exit poll data, 66 percent of voters under 30
voted for President-elect Barack Obama, the highest level of youth
support for a presidential candidate since tracking began in the 1970s,
and a leading factor in his victory.
“Not only was it the biggest margin that any presidential candidate
has received, but another notable thing is that Obama won the majority
of the white vote among the white, young voter,” Mr. Keeter said.
What’s more, Pew has shown that as voters grow in age, they tend to remain with their youth-vote party affiliation.
“The Republicans can’t afford to write this group off,” he said.
At the College of the Holy Cross’ Hogan Campus Center, about 100
students watched election returns on a big-screen TV. There were
several private parties at that school as well.
When it was announced that Mr. Obama won, the scene of tears, screaming and cheering was similar to the one near Clark.
“This election was something transformative,” said Alicia Molt, a
senior at Holy Cross. “I was so moved by this. It was wonderful to see
students in the streets cheering. It’s a wonderful day to be an
American.”
As the chairman of the school’s College Democrats, the history
major started volunteering with Mr. Obama’s campaign 14 months ago. She
traveled to New Hampshire for the primary there, manned phone banks,
held signs at 7 a.m. in Lincoln Square and drove students to the polls
on Election Day.
“If you present a candidate that really touches people, they will
be willing to work for him,” Ms. Molt said. “Obama’s message really
resonates with young people, and we proved that they will come out and
vote. I think this ushers in a new political era.”
Her appreciation for the president-elect grew when she was chosen
as one of 16 interns to work in Barack Obama’s Senate office in
Washington last year. She did everything from writing summaries to
giving tours, but meeting the future president was the highlight of the
semester.
“He spent about an hour with the interns one day and was pretty
cool,” she said. “He answered whatever we asked. Nothing was censored
and he was completely candid.”
Her classmate Ed Mullaney interned for Sen. Joseph Biden’s office
last year and had a similar experience. But he is proudest of his work
as president of the Student Government Association at Holy Cross, where
he led a voter registration campaign last year.
“People were lining up to register, and we signed up 776 students,”
Mr. Mullaney said. “The college youth vote was just so much more
excited. You could see it as they were registering. That wasn’t there
in 2004. At our roundtable debates this year, we had 60 students,
compared to 5 in 2004.”
The statistics support what college students such as Emily Dennstedt, 21, a senior at Worcester State College already knew.
“This election was all about Obama’s appeals to the college
demographic. He seems more interested in us and supports a lot of the
ideals that college students have,” she said. “I really wasn’t very
political at all, but there have never been so many things wrong with
this country, so I really got involved in this election.”
As a member of her school’s MASSPIRG, Ms. Dennstedt helped register 500 new voters during the campaign season.
“We put so much effort into this election talking to students all
over campus about voting,” she said. “We really need to feel like we
have a voice in our government, but it’s always been targeted to older
men. So, the more voters that we have registered, the more they will
take us seriously.”
By motivating them on their terms, this demographic registered to vote, registered others, campaigned and voted on Election Day.
“The best means that the candidates used to reach out to us were
through television shows like ‘The Daily Show,’ ‘Saturday Night Live’
and ‘The Colbert Report.’ That’s what got most of my friends talking,
first about the skits on those shows, then conversation would lead to
more serious topics,” said Nicole J. Dellasanta, 23, an Assumption
College graduate currently in the English master’s program at Clark.
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, research professor in the psychology
department at Clark, said the real key to the election was a
developmental stage between adolescence and young adulthood which he
called “emerging adulthood.”
“It’s an unfettered time of life when they don’t need permission to
do what they want,” he said. “They have no constraints and can just get
up and go.”
And go they did. By tens of thousands, college students went to
North Carolina, Virginia and Ohio and stayed for months working for
Barack Obama.
“I wasn’t able to do that. I’m 51, with a wife and two 9-year-olds,” Mr. Arnett said. “But they can and they did.”
