Courting the youth vote.

• Author: Elder, Janet

The presidential, campaigns are putting a Lot of energy into courting the youth vote. Links to online hangouts like YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook are all over the candidates' home pages, and some campaigns have hired youth-vote coordinators to mobilize young voters.

A recent poll. conducted by The New York Times, CBS News, and MTV suggests young Americans are indeed tuning in: 58 percent of 17-to-29-year-olds said they were paying attention to the campaign, compared with 35 percent at this point in the 2004 election cycle.

Young voters seem to be especially familiar with two of the candidates: Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York, both Democrats. Fifty-four percent said they planned to vote for a Democrat in 2008. The poll found that younger voters are generally slightly more liberal than the overall public.

Eighteen-year-olds cast ballots for President for the first time in 1972, following the ratification of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 from 21. That year, nearly 50 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds voted. Since then, turnout among this age group has varied, with 47 percent voting in 2004.

Young voters say the issues facing the nation today are compelling (see graph, right). Lawanna Verner, a 21-year-old from Hemingway, South Carolina, says: "The plain fact is that it is important for people in my age group to vote, because it's people our age who are overseas right now fighting in the war."

Brad Luhn, a 19-year-old college student from Thurmont, Maryland, says he definitely plans to vote next...