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Barack Obama on attracting young voters

1,559 views · Published 6 June 2008 · 1:40 · Indexed 27 October 2026

Channel: Iowa PBS · 2008 · News & Politics

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Barack Obama talks about the role of younger voters in his campaign.

This interview took place on November 9, 2007, at Iowa Public Television. http://www.iptv.org/campaign08/

Yepsen: I want to talk about younger voters. You have put a lot of effort into attracting younger democrats, younger activists. You see it in your crowds, big crowds, a lot of young people, yet historically these people just don't turn out. Our polling shows that only 2 percent of the likely democratic caucus goers are under age 25. So how are you going to make this work? Why are you the guy that's going to attract young people to the caucuses in a way that they've never been there before?  

Obama: Well, first of all, we're not banking just on young voters. We're going after the traditional Iowa caucus-goer. We've heard again and again how, you know, if people haven't gone to caucus before, they're not likely to come for the first time. We understand that and we are paying attention to that. I do think this election is different in the sense that young people recognize the big challenges that are coming up. They know the climate change is real and nobody is doing anything about it.   There is not a young person here who's not dealing with the cost of college.  I was up in Ames; the average cost for students out there when they graduate, they've got $27,000 in get debt, average.    So they feel very acutely some of the problems.   They've got friends who are in Iraq and Afghanistan.   I think they are going to be more motivated than they've been in the past.   We're not banking on them in order to win, but I do think that you're starting to see young people pay attention to some long-term issues that they feel Washington has neglected.

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