It's the economy, stupid. But some young voters say ending our war in Afghanistan and rethinking military spending ought to be higher on the agenda.
The political conventions are an opportunity for each party to erect their big tent and consolidate many disparate voices around a core set of ideas and values. The troubled economy and high unemployment looms large across the political spectrum of course, but plenty of other issues are influencing voters as we head into the peak of the election cycle.
Slate fed just about every speech made at the RNC into a word cloud generator and created the above illustration of the most common buzzwords spoken over those three days in Tampa. So how does that picture line up with the agenda of millennial generation voters? Reporters with Youth Radio, which has been closely tracking youth civic engagement at the RNC, took to the streets of Tampa to find out more about the top issues for young voters "who don’t identify with the mainstream Republican party."
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM1SpC2Z7ps
Though more than one of these young people cite the ongoing war and military spending, you won't find either of those in Slate's word cloud. In fact, Mitt Romney's speech last night was the first GOP acceptance since 1952 to not even mention war.
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