Why doesn't Edwards appeal to youth?
You’d think John Edwards would do well among young people, especially in the Democratic primaries. The former senator from North Carolina is relatively young himself, he’s running as a Washington outsider and he speaks to substantive youth issues, such as health care and raising the minimum wage. But the numbers tell the story of a campaign struggling for the attention of voters 29 and younger.
A Nov. 1 poll of 18-29 year olds commissioned by Rock the Vote and conducted by Sacred Heart University found that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) led young Democrats with 54.2 percent, followed by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) with 24.1 percent. Edwards was a distant third at 8.4 percent.
And in October the Pew Research Center found Edwards had the support of only 6 percent of Democrats ages 18-29, about half his support among all Democrats in major polls. Clinton and Obama got 42 percent and 32 percent, respectively, among young voters in the Pew poll.
On college campuses, where young voters are most concentrated, the evidence suggests that Edwards underperforms his overall numbers relative to his rivals. For instance, at the predominantly liberal Brown University in Providence, R.I., a poll conducted in early November by the school newspaper found Obama winning 37.5 percent of students versus 18.4 percent for Clinton and 5.6 percent for Edwards.
DeVaughn Ward, president of the Howard University College Democrats, said that Obama is the overwhelming favorite at the historically black college, with Clinton a distant second. Edwards, he said, doesn’t have even a sliver of support there.
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