Does lack of young mobilization hint at desire for third party option?

Look for Rick Santorum to do well on Super Tuesday. As the Wall Street Journal outlined this morning, the demographics of many of the Super Tuesday states — especially Ohio — lend themselves to Santorum's advantage.

The thing I'll be watching most closely next Tuesday is overall voter turnout, especially as it compares to 2008 levels. In the past, I've interpreted poor turnout during GOP primaries and caucuses as a positive sign for President Obama's re-election chances.

But not so fast.

In a column published last week, popular conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg argued that an unmotivated and demobilized electorate is not just a GOP problem. While GOP primary turnout, with the exception of South Carolina, has been pretty discouraging, Obama's reelection bid has yet to mobilize significant support levels either.

Goldberg writes:

The whippersnappers cost John McCain the election. Obama won young voters by a 2-1 margin. If the voting age were 35, McCain would have won. Youth support was also a crucial source of energy for the Obama campaign, fueling all of the social-media buzz and burnishing Obama's image as a change candidate in what was the mother of all change elections.

Almost four years later, the young people are less excited about Obama, and about politics in general.

Why? Because the "Great Recession" under Obama has been disproportionately brutal for younger workers. Last summer was the worst job market for young people since 1948. In 2010, the unemployment rate for college graduates 24 and younger hit an all-time high.

The youth unemployment rate is improving, but the mood of young people isn't where Obama needs it. A recent Harvard survey found that a majority of 18- to 29-year-old voters believe the country is going in the wrong direction, and a plurality of young Americans believe Obama will lose.

I believe the country may, finally, be ready to sustain another legitimate third party bid for the presidency, which we haven't seen since Ross Perot's bid. National polling continues to indicate that party affiliation is not nearly as important to millennials as it was to their parents and grandparents — which could make them more likely to ditch the elephants and donkeys for a strong third party candidate, whether that be Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Jon Huntsman or a contender from the left.

Take a look at this passage from a commentary published in Rolling Stone earlier this week:

In 2008, members of the "Millennial" generation — demographers' term for kids born between 1981 and 1993 — identified as Democrats rather than Republicans by 60 to 32 percent. Now, those figures are 47 and 43 percent.


The turn away from party identification has been a long-term American trend: According to Gallup, 40 percent of Americans don't consider themselves members of a political party, compared to 36 percent in 2002 and 33 percent in 1988. But that trend has been all the more accelerated among young people — and even more so among young progressives. A study by Tufts University's Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement in the key swing state of Nevada found that youth were 11 percent of registered voters in the 2008 election, but just 7.85 percent in October of 2011 – meaning a key Obama constituency in 2008 will have thinned out for 2012.

More menacingly for Dems, those same researchers found that in North Carolina, a Southern state where in 2008 Obama scored an apparently historic map-changing victory, Democratic registration among 18-25 year olds was 300,000 in 2008 – and only 265,000 in 2011.

Alexander: With third party efforts such as Americans Elect gaining monetary backing and momentum and with a GOP slate that remains disenchanting to most young voters — will 2012 be the year of the third party?