Obama tries to net youth vote via the Net

President Obama has been making an elaborate effort to appeal to younger voters in the final weeks before the midterm elections. On Oct 12, President Obama fielded the first presidential question via the Internet-calling service Skype.

Although Obama is widely thought to have triggered a surge in young voters in the 2008 campaign, that is not the case. About 18 percent of the electorate was voters age 29 and younger, compared with 17 percent four years earlier. But Obama won a much higher share of those voters - 34 percent - than Sen. John F. Kerry had four years earlier, giving him a significant advantage. Now, Democratic officials are hoping those same voters will break from historical trends and make their mark on the midterms, instead of leaving it to more reliable, older voters. For Tuesday's event, which was billed as a town-hall meeting, officials solicited questions through Facebook, Twitter and Skype. An official with the Democratic National Committee said the questions that were used were selected in advance, to be integrated into the technology of the event, but were chosen to be representative of all of those submitted.