CHECK OUT THE BLOG FOR REGULAR UPDATES AND DEBATE ISSUES...With the diverse group of candidates in the running for the highest office in the land, I decided to create a myspace page to give especially young people a candid view of each of the candidates and what their views are and how it affects us.The candidates will be in my Top 16 in no particular order. I will constantly update this page as things develop with the different candidates and I hope that you all add this profile and participate in the process.Politicians failed to tap the youth vote even after record turnout in the 2004 U.S. presidential election and will need the Internet to draw this block, a Harvard University survey showed recently.Young Americans were largely ignored by political campaigns during the 2006 congressional election, but their ballots helped decide two tight U.S. Senate races for Democrats, said John Della Volpe, polling director at Harvard's Institute of Politics."Despite record turnout of the youth vote in 2004, it was not a major target of most political campaigns in 2006," Della Volpe said. "Anyone who doesn't believe how powerful young voters are should speak to former Senator George Allen."The Virginia Republican was unseated by newcomer Jim Webb, a former Marine with a son serving in Iraq, who relied on heavier turnout among students in Charlottesville and Norfolk counties and helped the Democrats gain control of the Senate.Energized by the Iraq war, more young people voted in last year's congressional election than they had in at least 20 years. In the 2004 presidential vote, a record 42 percent of Americans under the age of 30 cast ballots, compared to 29 percent in the 2000 White House election, the survey noted.Harvard pollsters interviewed 59 managers at top campaigns around the country between Labor Day and Election Day 2006. No margin of error was given.To draw in younger voters in 2008, campaign managers suggested candidates' speeches should be posted on their Web sites and YouTube immediately and that supporters should be allowed to film and post their own ads.Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, are using their Web sites aggressively to court younger voters. Web pages like this one is dedicated to bringing you the different point of views of all the candidates.One way to measure a candidates' appeal with youth, Della Volpe explained, are the numbers of people who registered themselves as the politicians' friends on their profiles on social networking Web site MySpace. Yay for Myspace!"In terms of those numbers, Obama is way ahead of Hillary Clinton who is very, very far ahead of Republican candidate Mitt Romney," Della Volpe said. The Republican candidates are catching on and just about everyone has created a myspace page.Della Volpe said the youth vote was not chased effectively last year because younger voters are considered hard to reach and don't respond well to such traditional campaign tools as television commercials or leaflet mailings.Campaign managers recommended candidates tour college campuses and set up an office near a university, the survey showed.The "Generation Y" of Americans born from 1977 to 1994 -- shaped by the September 11 attacks, the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, and online social networks -- in eight years will make up a third of the U.S. electorate.
