Republicans are also looking to drive voters to the polls with specific issues, much the same way that Republicans used gay-marriage ballot votes to increase conservative turnout in key states in 2004.
In notoriously anti-tax New Hampshire, the GOP is trying to do that this year through a proposal to cap property-tax increases at the rate of inflation. “It’s a motivational tool to get conservatives to the polls,” says one labor organizer.
Because New Hampshire has no state-wide ballot-initiative process, the tax-cap backers, led by New Hampshire Advantage Coalition, have been working to get it on local ballots. They have met with limited success: the Concord City Council has just blocked it from the ballot in that city, and Democratic aldermen in Manchester did the same there. So far, the initiative will only appear in Rochester.
Democrats, meanwhile, have their own secret weapon to boost turnout: young people.
Voters under age 30 made up a record 16 percent of the New Hampshire primary vote this year (despite the election being held during winter break), up from 14 percent in 2004 and 11 percent in 2000, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University.
Those voters are skewing almost two-to-one for Obama in polls; the higher their share of the total vote in November, the better for Obama. With the school year just kicking off, college political organizations are fervently registering students to vote — and in particular, encouraging them to switch their registration from their home states to New Hampshire. If they vote in large enough numbers, they could easily tip the Granite State for Obama — and that, in turn, could be what puts him in the White House.
To read the “Talking Politics” blog, go to thePhoenix.com/talkingpolitics. David S. Bernstein can be reached at dbernstein@phx.com.
