Live video discussion: Will Obama still appeal to young voters?
Join us at latimes.com for a live video discussion at 2 p.m. Pacific time (5 p.m. Eastern) about the import and impact of the youth vote in the 2012 election.
In 2008, President Obama’s campaign mantras of hope and change resonated strongly with America’s voting youth. He won the presidency with 66% of the 18-to-29-year-old demographic.
Fast forward to 2012, the next generation of college students and young voters are faced with overwhelming student debt and an ominous employment outlook while Obama has been in office.
Although most polls show Obama currently holding a big lead over Republican nominee Mitt Romney in that demographic, the question remains whether he can pull both an equally high percentage of that vote, and an equal turnout of young voters as well.
As the Democratic National Convention gets underway in Charlotte, N.C., Los Angeles Times Washington columnist Doyle McManus, joined by Times politics editor Cathleen Decker, will host a panel of guests including Andrew Jenks, who has been covering the 2012 election for MTV News; Felicia Sullivan, a senior researcher from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement at Tufts University; Meg Turney, who hosts YouTube celebrity Philip DeFranco’s spinoff channel SourceFed; Alejandra Salinas, president of the College Democrats of America; and Nicholas Rafidi, a first-generation American who is currently an unemployed student.
You’re invited to participate by submitting questions here on this post, on our Google+ page or via Twitter with the hashtag #asklatimes. We’ll do our best to incorporate them into the live discussion.
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