Birmingham View News Portal

Amaya Smith, spokeswoman for the Obama campaign in Alabama, said young campaign workers, some fresh from South Carolina, have made more than 16,000 phone calls, and knocked on 7,500 doors in two days.

The grassroots campaign includes the standard techniques, phone banks and television commercials, but it also targets young voters through YouTube videos, e-mails, mobile phone text messaging and ringtones.

People aged 18 to 25 are turning out overwhelmingly for Obama in the early primary states by as much as 67 percent, Smith said, so much so that the campaign has organized Students for Obama, where college students work to turn out the vote among their peers on campus.

However, Larry Powell, a political communications professor at the University of Alabama Birmingham, questions whether young voter turnout will give

Obama the boost he needs to win Alabama, and the Democratic nomination.

“In every past election in memory, there has always been a campaign that tries to register and turn out young voters on their behalf,” Powell said.  “They always fail, because they don't get to the polls for various reasons. However, there is a different kind of interest behind Obama than there has been in the past.”

Powell attributes young voter interest to the general public's disenchantment with President George W. Bush’s administration, and Obama's ability to articulate a vision for change that reaches across socio-economic, racial and generational lines, even if his vision is somewhat short on specifics.

“Having something to vote against, and something to vote for, is a double motivation,” he said.  “They are the ones most affected by the Iraq war and education, and young White voters don't see color like their parents or grandparents did.”

Mobile County held early voting last week, because Super Tuesday coincides with the city's annual Mardi Gras celebration.

Voter turnout was so high in some polling places, Smith said, that election officials ran out of Democratic ballots.  Some local organizers were troubled that these incidents happened at large, predominantly Black polls.

“People are excited about the kind of change that Sen. Obama represents,” Smith said.  “So, we've seen record turnouts this year.  “(Mobile) is an indicator of the turnout we'll see in Alabama, and not just Alabama, but all across the country.”

This story was written for the Afro American Newspapers. 

More video footage from Obama's Visit to Birmingham:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

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