Interesting article in the Chicago Sun-Times about how Barack Obama’s campaign staff is for the first time, claiming in a memo released to the press that Obama has a “hidden vote” not seen by polls:

“…polls consistently under-represent in Iowa, and elsewhere, the strength of Barack’s support among younger voters for at least three reasons. In more than one survey, Barack’s support among Iowa young voters exceeded the support of all the other candidates combined. First, young voters are dramatically less likely to have caucused or voted regularly in primaries in the past, so pollsters heavily under-represent them. Second, young voters are more mobile and are much less likely to be at home in the early evening and thus less likely to be interviewed in any survey. Third, young voters are much less likely to have a landline phone and much more likely to rely exclusively upon cell phones, which are automatically excluded from phone surveys. So all of these state and national surveys have and will continue to under-represent Barack’s core support – in effect, his hidden vote in each of these pivotal early states. Of course, there are organizational challenges associated with maximizing this support, but we are heavily focused on that task.”

This may seem like a quasi ridiculous statement to older voters, but it obvious to anyone who spent time on a college campus. Obama has overwelming support among these “fuck land lines” young people, even with people who don’t like politics in general. Not only do people love him, they even always exclaim, “Doesn’t everybody support him? I don’t see how he can be down in the polls.” They all love him, but the problem is they also still believe they are in the passive, no use-in-participating system.

Obama needs to be issuing a challenge to all young voters. He needs to get more pro-active with them. Help them organize. Reach out in an unprecedented way. God knows he has to money that can help set-up a process to make sure college kids with cell phones vote. Obviously they never have before, or they wouldn’t always be excluded from scientific polls, so he should not be taking this issue lightly. The support is there to win the whole thing for him, he just has to make sure he can get that same support to the polls on election day.