Darren Samuelsohn is a senior policy reporter for Politico.

DES MOINES, Iowa—Rand Paul might be a flagging presence on the national scene, but his libertarian message still makes him the front-runner with a certain segment of the college crowd. They showed up at his tailgates during football season; they hoisted beers this fall at “Pints for Liberty” rallies in Iowa bars. One college-themed entrepreneur even sells a line of “Keg Stand for Rand” T-shirts. If he has a shot at keeping his campaign alive, it depends on translating that enthusiasm into actual attendance at Iowa caucuses next Monday night. Which means getting the kind of 20-year-olds who’d buy a “Keg Stand” T-shirt to actually feel fired up about spending their evening sitting around at a local political meeting, waiting to cast their lots for a quirky Kentucky ophthalmologist.

“Don’t get lazy,” exhorted Paul campaign manager Chip Englander, standing in front of more than two dozen of his top student organizers on a recent sub-zero Saturday night here at his state headquarters. He urged them to “master the logistics” of caucus night, marching Paul supporters from their dorm rooms, apartment buildings and fraternity houses if it they needed to. He invoked the 34-vote margin that delivered an Iowa win to Rick Santorum four years ago.


“That’s some of your guys’ [residence] halls,” Englander shouted. As he gave his pep talk, a cowbell—dubbed the campaign’s “Liberty bell”—clanged every time an organizer signed up a new Paul supporter. “There are so many students and so few people that participate. It’s all on you guys!”

With the town-by-town battle for Iowa in full swing, another front has emerged: college students. For the first time since 2004, the caucus will take place when students are on campus rather than scattered across the state and country on holiday break. The numbers at stake are huge: More than 120,000 students are enrolled in the state’s four-year colleges and universities, roughly equal to a typical total statewide turnout for either party. In 2008, Barack Obama’s ability to galvanize students secured him a massive turnout, and the win.

This year, interviews with students and campaigns suggests the college contest has boiled down to a four-way race. Paul stands out as the lone GOP candidate with any substantive and sustained campaign operation targeting students, while Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley are both pushing hard to peel students away from Bernie Sanders, whose relentless anti-establishment message has made him perhaps the most popular campus candidate. Donald Trump is also barnstorming across Iowa’s college towns, drawing in many curious student onlookers, but a recent Politico visit to several campuses found little in the way of a formal Trump organization aimed at turning that interest into actual support on caucus night.

Any campaign trying to pull in the college vote faces a challenge just identifying potential supporters, never mind getting them to turn out. Not only do students often lack a permanent address and forgo a telephone landline, they’re usually first-time voters who don’t initially show up in the data files that presidential campaigns spend tens of millions of dollars building.

Most of the campaigns have decided it makes little sense to spend limited time and resources on a demographic they figure would rather spend a few hours on a Monday night studying (or partying) instead of attending a political event that sounds confusing, inconsequential and pretty darn boring.

Those that do face a number of questions. Can they make caucuses seem interesting, even inspiring? How do you appeal to a set of people who aren’t necessarily dialed into the contentious political conversation that usually animates primaries?

At times, the student vote can feel like a parallel universe. For most political observers, Bill Clinton is a huge question hanging over his wife’s campaign: Is the charismatic, flawed, ex-president a liability? An asset? An unsavory hint of dynasty? For college voters, many of whom weren’t even born when the Democrat was first sworn into the White House, it might be none of the above. “I keep forgetting that he was president,” said 20-year old Lauren Freeman, president of the University of Iowa's College Democrats and a Hillary Clinton campaign volunteer.

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Clinton and her college student backers are challenged in trying to sell a candidate whose primary appeal is to older generations who lived through her husband’s two terms. The campaign’s solution is an on-campus effort built around organizational muscle and using younger surrogates like Chelsea Clinton and Lena Dunham, the creator and star of the HBO series “Girls.” During an appearance last Thursday night in Iowa City—according to the Des Moines Register’s candidate tracker it was Hillary Clinton's fourth visit to the college town— the campaign brought along the 23-year old pop singer and former child actress Demi Lovato.

Once the stars move on, Clinton’s student volunteers and supporters are working their classmates through phone banks, blast emails and in-person chats from dorms to dining halls. They’re urging students from Illinois, Minnesota and other states to register for the caucus as new Iowa voters.

Asked to share his pitch for why someone would become an Iowa caucus goer instead of participating back home later in the 2016 cycle, Trent Seubert, a University of Iowa senior who has been working for the last year on the Clinton campaign, replied: “I don’t know if it’s the whole world, but the whole country looks at us on one night and it’s really cool to participate in that kind of process. Hopefully hearing that, if that doesn’t inspire them to like go caucus, I don’t know what will.”

O’Malley, meanwhile, might be “Martin who?” in the national polls, but his visits to Iowa campuses suggest he’s making a genuine run for the student vote. The former Maryland governor has made more visits to the state’s two primary academic anchors—Iowa City and Ames—than either Clinton or Sanders, according to the Register’s tally, and on Monday his campaign announced “a week-long barnstorm of college campuses” to pump up enthusiasm as the caucus gets closer. He’s paid special attention to the smaller college towns scattered across the state, too. On a recent stop at Cornell College, a liberal arts school in the eastern Iowa town of Mount Vernon, the Democrat's campaign supplied free pizza to a crowd of about 100 people as it circulated sign-up sheets seeking new volunteers to work during the “Final Four” days of the caucus and knocking on their classmates' doors.

“I’m hoping for a huge turnout among young people,” O’Malley said in an interview after his speech. “They give me hope. The sort of cynicism and self-defeat that we have about our politics they don’t share. And they know the world is always changing. They know the problems and threats always change. But they’re pretty fearless and confident about our ability to overcome our challenges.”

Will that optimism translate into showing up? On Monday, his campaign released a memo from 11 student leaders who go to schools across Iowa urging their classmates to caucus for the former Maryland governor. “Young Americans need a President who thinks like we do and shares our values,” they wrote, citing O’Malley’s record on bipartisanship, education and climate change. Back on Cornell’s campus, O’Malley’s campaign was also recruiting volunteers to participate in “morning shenanigans” on caucus day, which sounds a lot more fun than it is. An aide to the former Maryland governor explained that it really just involved blanketing dorms and cars with campaign leaflets.

At a rally at the University of Iowa on April 10, 2015, Rand Paul already had his sights set on student turnout for next week's caucuses. | Getty

On the Republican side, it’s Rand Paul who’s generated the most enthusiasm, and whose campaign is paying the most attention. His GOP rivals aren’t ignoring the college crowd, but interviews with conservative-minded students across the state suggest that the fine arguments being made by Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and the like over taxes, immigration policy and America’s role in the world aren’t huge draws.

Paul is different. Even as he’s slipped nationwide, he’s held his ground with libertarian-minded students—his campaign said it had received 1,000 new caucus commitments from Iowa State’s students during their first week back to class earlier this month—by sticking to a message that promotes Internet privacy and just generally giving a middle finger to the country’s political establishment.

The Kentucky senator started out this presidential race inheriting some of the same youth vote enthusiasm that his father, then-Rep. Ron Paul, amassed during upstart White House runs in 2008 and 2012. He’s tried this cycle to maintain that enthusiasm through everything from tailgating last fall at Iowa State and University of Iowa football games to three “Pints for Liberty” events held in the state’s largest college towns.

As the caucus heads into the home stretch, Paul’s hitting one college town after another: He’s scheduled rallies Thursday at Drake University in Des Moines, Saturday at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Sunday at the University of Dubuque and also in Iowa City and a finale just two hours before the caucus starts in Ames. The Paul campaign made its youth vote calculations early on—setting a goal of getting 10,000 college students to caucus for the senator—knowing classes would be back in session in 2016. “It’s a different ballgame this time,” said David Fischer, co-chair for Paul’s Iowa campaign and a former state GOP leader. “It’d be a mistake not to get them mobilized.”





Of course, running as an outsider has its risks. If Paul faces a challenge, it might not be from his GOP rivals at all. “I’ve got a lot of friends who were Ron Paul supporters but now they’re Bernie supporters,” said Jack Heimbach, a 20-year old community college student from Des Moines now organizing for Rand Paul’s campaign.

As for the other GOP candidates, many have also made frequent visits to college campuses across the state. But students on the ground say they haven’t done much else to court their classmates. Cruz’s campaign touts a millennial coalition, for example, but the undergraduates I interviewed said they hadn’t seen much of a presence from the Texas senator on their campuses. Rubio, at 44, has made a late run for the college crowd in Iowa. The Florida senator got a warm reception from students Saturday on the Iowa State campus and has also tried to appeal to college-age voters through social media, including a self-deprecating Q&A with the senator about football and another online video depicting first-time voters. And he’s got a bit of buzz in Ames thanks to a pure show of loyalty: in the “Free Speech Zone,” an area in front of the library specifically set aside for campaigning, on extremely cold days the sole occupant is often 20-year-old sophomore and Rubio volunteer Kellen Schmitz, who sets up a table with campaign literature trying to sign up new supporters. “I’m from Minnesota. We do that,” Schmitz said in a recent interview in Ames.

Then there’s Trump. He’s consistently filled up arenas and auditoriums in big and small college towns across Iowa; another rally is set for Tuesday night on the University of Iowa campus. He’s also enjoying a lead in the national polls among younger voters, including a December survey for 18- to 29-year-olds by Harvard’s Institute of Politics that had him with 22 percent of the support among Republican candidates.

But in Iowa, of the more than 50 college students, teachers, volunteers and campaign staff interviewed by Politico, no one had seen a substantive, formal organized Trump campaign effort to get the students to caucus on the billionaire’s behalf. Several students who have attended his events say they really went to catch a whiff of celebrity and witness a potential moment in American history.

“I just thought that seeing such an unusual candidate so close in person would not be an opportunity that would come around again,” Grace Scheibe, an 18-year old Iowa State freshman wrote in an email after attending Trump’s Tuesday night rally on campus. The rally made national headlines because it included an endorsement from Sarah Palin. That didn’t make an impression on Scheibe: She says she’s likely to caucus for Sanders.

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No candidate has as much to gain from the college crowd in Iowa as Sanders, and no candidate has as much to lose from the peculiar caucus rules.

Pollsters for Sanders last year saw indications that the under-25 set would embrace the 74-year-old Vermonter if he pushed issues they cared about—free college tuition, same-sex marriage, legalized marijuana—and those projections were right. Ask young Sanders supporters what they like about him and the responses often echo what was said about a certain former Illinois senator whose Iowa victory over Hillary Clinton in 2008 served as an opening springboard to the White House.

While Sanders seems unlikely to generate the same turnout levels that Obama did that year —a record 240,000 Democrats caucused that cycle—he’s still seen as coming closest to capturing some of that energy. On Iowa State’s campus, for example, the Students for Bernie group says it has collected thousands of commitment cards from classmates who promise to caucus for the senator, as well as offers to volunteer from upwards of 600 students. And that’s before Sanders had made a single visit to the campus itself (he’s finally scheduled to attend an event on Monday).

The polls in Iowa and nationally have steadily reflected Sanders’ appeal to the youth vote, and a recent survey that garnered attention in the Des Moines Register showed him topping Clinton in the three Iowa counties that are home to the state’s largest academic institutions: Story (Iowa State), Johnson (University of Iowa) and Black Hawk (University of Northern Iowa).

But there’s one logistical problem with the Iowa Democratic caucus: The pure number of votes you can pull in doesn’t matter. What matters is how many caucuses you win—so running the table in Ames, Iowa City and Cedar Falls doesn’t help much. In fact it might waste votes.

So Bernie’s campaign is trying an unusual strategy: Rather than rousting students from beds, bars and study halls, it’s trying to get some of them to spread out across the state. This “Caucus for Bernie” effort—targeting college students who live within a reasonable driving distance of their hometowns—includes online ads via mobile phones and social media accounts, as well as a special new website that is aimed at helping interested students to coordinate ride shares. “I think we’ve rented every van in three states to make sure we have the ability,” Pete D’Alessandro, Sanders’ Iowa state coordinator, said in an interview.

So are students really excited enough to leave campus next Monday? Talking with dozens of the senator’s student supporters across Iowa, many told me they were surprised that a Sanders-led campaign to caucus at home would even be a thing. Logistically, students said they’re challenged just trying to squeeze the caucus into their otherwise busy schedules, never mind adding a late-night winter road trip before Tuesday morning classes. Several students also noted that they wanted to caucus where they’re most comfortable, among fellow classmates and where they’ve only just started to shape their own political views. Publicly declaring their political stripes in a caucus back home in front of family and long-time friends, especially in more conservative parts of the state, could be awkward.

“I just kind of like being in a community where there are a lot of people who share the same interests and who I can talk to about all this,” said Holly Prohaska, a 20-year old Sanders supporter and University of Iowa sophomore who said she didn’t have any plans to travel back home for the caucus to Cedar Falls.

The University of Iowa-Iowa State University football game in Ames, Iowa last September was a popular tailgating destination for 2016 candidates such as Marco Rubio, who used the day to bond with an ISU fraternity. | Getty

Rosie Cook, an Iowa State freshman who is leading her school’s Students for Bernie group and also working on caucus night as one of the senator’s precinct captains, said she worried that the campaign could overthink its strategy and end up shrinking its vote totals in college towns. That could really cause problems if there were an unexpected wave of Clinton backers.

“I think our votes are best utilized here in Ames and on the campus in our precincts,” she said.

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And however much students might be feeling the Bern, or hoisting one for Rand, the campaigns also face one basic challenge: boosting awareness of what the caucus is all about.

Clinton’s University of Iowa student volunteers say they were talking with students last year who didn’t even know who was running for president. As for explaining the caucus itself, with all its strange nuances that turn it into an event quite unlike the familiar secret ballot of a general election, well, good luck with that.

“I can’t say I’ve heard of it actually,” Thomas Johnson, a 19-year old who had just transferred to Iowa State from the University of Missouri, said when asked if he had any plans to participate in the caucus.

“I don’t know where one is or how to get to one,” replied Sarah Palmer, a 19-year old freshman at Cornell College who said she had been leaning toward supporting Clinton. Interviewed a few minutes after watching O’Malley speak on her campus, she said she was “really impressed” with the former Maryland governor. But she was on the fence about even participating.

“I’m not super involved. I don’t keep up on it,” she said. “I’m not sure I have enough information to cast a caucus quite yet.”

