Young voters gave Barack Obama a big boost in the 2008 presidential election, when a highly energized group of twenty-somethings accounted for 18 percent of all ballots cast.

No one expects Republican nominee Mitt Romney to win the youth vote this November, but analysts say $4 dollar a gallon gas, crushing student debt and an uncertain job market could cut into the lead Democrats have with some young voters while causing others to sit the election out.

“Obama is going to win the 18-29 vote; no Democrat has lost it since Michael Dukakis in 1988,” said Geoffrey Skelley, political analyst for the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “The question is by how much.”

About 1.57 million Ohioans under 30 are registered to vote as of September — and candidates have been wooing the age group with visits to college campuses across the state. President Obama, who announced his re-election campaign at Ohio State University, held rallies this week at Bowling Green State and Kent State universities, where he urged students to register to vote. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan held one of his first events at Miami University after being named the Republican vice presidential candidate.

The two campaigns are using different messages in their appeals to young people, Skelley said. Obama is touting the part of his health care law that allows children to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26, his efforts to limit student loan debt and his stance of social issues such as gay marriage.

Romney’s message is much simpler: He’s telling young voters, “I can fix the economy,” Skelley said.

Fading enthusiasm?

While young people turned out in record numbers in 2008, there is some evidence of a drop in enthusiasm this year. Overall, 58 percent of likely Ohio voters say they are highly enthusiastic about the race, but the percentage goes lower with the younger demographic, according to the most recent Marist Poll. Of those 18-29, 51 percent said they were very enthusiastic, the lowest percentage among the various age groups.

Romney can’t take much encouragement from the numbers, though, because the enthusiasm levels were about the same for Romney supporters as they were for Obama backers.

“The youth vote undoubtedly will dip in 2012, but how far down it goes it going to be the question,” said Tyler Harber, a Washington-based Republican strategist and a former pollster.

Young voters who supported the president in 2008, then graduated college to find lackluster job prospects may be less inclined to support Obama again, Harber said. But that doesn’t necessarily turn them onto Romney, he said.

“The job issue affects them, but they can’t pull the lever for Mitt Romney,” Harber said. “So what do they do? They don’t vote.”

Central State University graduate student Cara Lindo, 29, is not one of those who won’t vote. She says she’ll vote for Obama. But she acknowledges that some of the enthusiasm young people felt for Obama in 2008 is no longer present.

“What really kind of contributed to the excitement the first time around was that he was so brand new and he was proposing this change,” she said. “There was a lot of hope there because we didn’t know what he could do. A lot of the problems he inherited couldn’t really be fixed in four years, so I think a little bit of that excitement is gone, but (we’re) still hopeful that things can change and things can get better.”

Jobs and debt

Polls show the economy is the top issue on the minds of young voters, just like all age groups. And although college-age kids mostly back Democratic candidates, there is a wide difference of opinion on the strategies for moving the country forward.

Stephanie Peck Pape, 29, said she favors Romney because she believes he can improve the economy. Pape earned a master’s degree from the University of Cincinnati in 2007 and now works in accounting.

“I think with his background, he’ll be able to do more to help us out in the future to end this recession,” she said.

Jobs and where to find them top the list of concerns for young people. Ohioans ages 20 to 24 face higher unemployment rates, especially those without college degrees. The age group’s unemployment sat at 16.3 percent in 2011, up from 11.3 percent in 2008 and 10.5 percent in 2004. Ohio’s overall current unemployment rate is 7.2 percent.

“There are plenty of young people finishing school and having to move back in with their parents because they can’t find a job,” Skelley said.

Those who do graduate college in Ohio leave school with an average debt of $27,713, according to the Project on Student Debt. Student loan debt nationwide now exceeds $1 trillion, and both political parties are responding with calls to check college costs.

Obama has emphasized his reform of student loans and his efforts to increase federal student aid as he targets college-age voters.

The Republican party platform says new systems are needed to compete with four-year colleges, including private training schools, online universities and work-based learning in the private sector.

Republicans also say “federal student aid is on an unsustainable path” and that “the federal government should not be in the business of originating student loans,” but serve as an insurance guarantor to the private sector.

Such a change would be a major departure. Colleges typically advise students who need money to pay for school to look at federal loans first.

“Every college would say start with the federal loans,” said Brent Shock, director of student financial assistance at Miami University. Those loans come with protections such as the ability to defer payments if a graduate is unemployed, make payments based on income, and cancel the loan if the borrower passes away. Private loan interest rates also change over time, he said.

Wright State student Ryan Ayres, 20, supports Obama because he thinks he represents people of all incomes. But Ayers, a junior who has accumulated $40,000 in debts through federal loans, said he doesn’t favor privatizing student loans, as suggested in the Republican platform.

“College is obviously way more expensive than it ever has been. There’s not going to be one simple solution for it,” said Ayers, who is studying management information systems. “I’d much rather borrow from the government than a bank for my education. You can never get rid of private student loans in bankruptcy ever. That’s a really stressful thing for people to think about.”

Daniel Rajaiah, president of the College Democrats of Ohio, said he touts Obama’s economic record when trying to persuade undecided voters on campus.

“I talk about how the stock market has nearly doubled since he took office. I talk about how he doubled Pell grants and how the economy is getting better,” Rajaiah said. “My pitch is they’re better off now than they were four years ago. That is the bottom line.”

Typically, Rajaiah and Jamie Lever, president of the University of Dayton College Republicans, don’t agree on what President Obama has done for the economy during his nearly four years in office.

Leaver, a senior who plans to attend law school, said lowering taxes for business owners who create jobs and repealing Obamacare are key steps toward economic recovery and a better job market for young people like her.

She says she will owe about $62,000 when she graduates in the spring with a degree in political science.

“If I can get a steady job after graduation I won’t be too concerned about paying off my debt,” she said.

Uphill battle

The big lead Democrats have among younger voters doesn’t mean Republicans have written them off.

Chris Maloney, Romney’s spokeman in Ohio, said young voters are the backbone of the Republican campaign’s grassroots organization.

“The President offered a pretty exciting vision four years ago, but today younger voters are in need of jobs and results and Barack Obama hasn’t delivered. Mitt Romney will,” he said. “Gov. Romney is proposing meaningful reforms to help guarantee that every student can find a rewarding job and afford to pay down the costs associated with securing a good college education so they can realize their full potential.”

Recent polls show Republicans are in for an uphill battle. A poll conducted by the University of Cincinnati for the Dayton Daily News and the Ohio Newspaper Association found that Obama holds a 5-point lead over Romney among likely Ohio voters and a 27-point lead among those ages 18 to 29.

The Marist Poll had a similar finding, showing that Obama has the backing of 55 percent of likely Ohio voters younger than 30. And a Fox News poll from Sept. 16-18 of Ohio voters found that 65 percent of those 18 to 35-year-old favor Obama compared with 26 percent backing Romney.

“The youth vote is crucial for us,” said Buffy Wicks, national Operation Vote director for Obama for America. “It’s obviously a big piece of how we got elected in 2008 and it’s a crucial demographic for us in 2012.”

Exit polls in 2008 showed just 36 percent of voters under 30 supported Republican John McCain.

The reason for this wide disparity in Republican and Democratic support is that young people are more socially liberal, said Skelley.

“Remember that the younger the age group, the more diverse it is,” he said. “Whereas the great majority of 65+ voters are white, voters in the 18-29 age group are far more diverse due to the rapid population growth of Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans, and other groups. All minority groups are more likely to vote Democratic at any age, including young people.”

Twenty-somethings are a hard demographic for campaigns to reach, said Paul Beck, a political scientist at Ohio State University. Those not in college tend to move frequently, and they are highly persuadable because they have yet to establish a strong partisan voting habit, he said.

For both parties, reaching that population requires more than 30-second TV spots run over and over and over again. It takes online advertising, social media and face time — one of the reasons the candidates keep showing up on college campuses.

And it also requires a nod toward being, even in a small way, cool. Or at least not being uncool. It’s one of the reasons the 42-year-old Ryan rarely wears a tie on the campaign trail.

Republicans at the University of Georgia believe they’ve been more effective in reaching young voters this year than in 2008.

Even the Romney artwork is hipper, said Ashley Williams, 22, chairwoman of the UGA College Republicans.

In addition to holding debates to argue national policies, her group works to attract voters with T-shirts, tank tops, bumper stickers and beer koozies.

“We are really, really trying to market Gov. Romney on campus better than we were able to do (with McCain) in 2008,” Williams said. “I hope that makes a difference.”