Student supporters of Sen. Barack Obama have been campaigning persistently on Syracuse University’s campus ahead of New York primary election Tuesday, riding a wave of youth support for Obama across the nation.
“The student vote is resonating with Sen. Obama,” said Marshall Spevak, SU’s campus coordinator for Students for Obama. “We’re stirring up a debate here on campus and we’re getting people talking about him.”
Obama, D-Ill., has been drawing record numbers of young voters to the polls this primary season. In last month’s Iowa caucuses, 57 percent of voters between the ages of 17 and 19 voted for Obama, according to The New York Times’ entrance polls. In the New Hampshire primary, Obama received 60 percent of the youth vote and 67 percent in South Carolina, according to The Times’ exit polls.
With New York and 21 other states holding Democratic caucuses or primaries on Tuesday, the Obama campaign is looking to young voters to help carry Obama to the Democratic nomination for president.
On the Syracuse University campus, more than 60 students have joined the SU chapter of Students for Barack Obama. Those young voters have rallied behind Obama because of his charisma and his staunch opposition to the war in Iraq, say Obama supporters and political scientists.
Spevak, the SU campus coordinator for Obama and a sophomore political science major, started working with the campaign last summer after meeting Obama. Spevak was working for a New Jersey state senator who endorsed Obama’s candidacy. Spevak then had a chance to have a one-on-one conversation with Obama, who asked how the Syracuse basketball team would be this season.
“He’s just a genuine guy,” said Spevak. “He’s not like any other politician I’ve seen in a while. He really engaged me and that was enough for me to say ‘This is the guy I want to lead this country.’”
Marc Peters, a senior majoring in policy studies at SU, is the national blog director for Students for Barack Obama. That means Peters updates the blog on the Students for Barack Obama Web site at least once a week. These updates include reviews of what the campaign did the week before and posts about key events geared toward youth voters.
Peters cited Obama’s “refreshing” politics as the key factor to his youth support. “After seven years of divisive politics, this is a time our country could use someone who can inspire hope, someone who can unite a large number of people across party lines to bring together a new majority for change,” Peters said. “I think Obama’s uniquely suited to do that.”
Peters also praised Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war. “He was against the war from the beginning,” Peters said. “Students who are against the war really find that admirable.”
Jeffrey Stonecash, a political science professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public affairs, emphasized Obama’s stance on the war as a key to his success with young voters. “There are a great number of them who are terribly troubled by the war,” he said. “He’s the clearest opponent of that of the viable candidates. I think that’s playing a big role.”
Stonecash agreed with some critics who have said a lot of Obama’s youth support is just a temporary pop-culture fad. But he argued the reasons young voters are voting for Obama don’t matter in the long run. “He sort of burst on the scene. People don’t know who he is really,” Stonecash said. “I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that if you went and did a survey on whether these voters know his policy positions, you’d get a high failure rate. But that’s OK. Unless he stumbles badly, that’s OK. People didn’t know what George Bush stood for before he was elected.”
Obama has frequently praised the young voters who have turned out at the early primaries, saying the record turnout is an indication of a national movement.
“There’s something happening in America,” Obama said in his concession speech after last month’s primary election in New Hampshire. “There’s something happening when Americans who are young in age and in spirit, who have never participated in politics before, turn out in numbers we have never seen because they know in their hearts that this time must be different.”
(Heath D. Williams is a junior newspaper major.)
-30-
