At 26, Eric Hoplin leads a multimillion-dollar operation with 74 full-time employees and one goal: to mobilise college students to register and vote for President George W. Bush in November.
Hoplin, chairman of the College Republican National Committee, is one element of an unprecedented blitz to convince 18- to 24-year-olds to get out and vote in the November 2 presidential election.
The Democrats are making a similar effort on behalf of their candidate, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.
"There are more efforts this year by more organisations than I have ever recalled having seen in the past," said Ken Stroupe, a political scientist at the University of Virginia.
"If it doesn't work it won't be for lack of effort."
Voters younger than 25 have historically been the least likely to cast ballots since the US voting age was lowered to 18 in 1972. They represent an untapped gold mine as Bush and Kerry head for election day on November 2 locked in a dead heat in most polls.
Kerry currently leads among young voters, but Hoplin is hopeful.
"Students are going to buck the conventional wisdom and they're going to flock to George W. Bush," he said.
Reaching these voters can be daunting. Years of effort by both political campaigns and non-partisan groups have failed to get more than half of the eligible voters in the 18-24 age group to register and vote in recent elections.
Recent studies show younger voters are more likely to turn to non-traditional media - even entertainment media - as their primary source of information about politics, further isolating them from the process.
Hoplin and others however say this year will be different. The 2000 election, in which Bush won the Electoral College vote but lost the popular vote after bitter controversy over his razor-thin victory in the key state of Florida, convinced many young people that even a single vote can make a difference, they say.
And the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, along with US military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, also brought home the importance of politics to many potential young voters.
"Young people feel the stakes are so high this year ... they feel they cannot afford not to be involved," said Jay Strell, communications director of Rock the Vote, a non-partisan organisation that uses entertainment celebrities to encourage voting among young Americans.
Strell said his group is halfway to its goal of registering one million new voters at rock concerts and with outreach efforts in communities across the country. The group hopes to see a record 20 million 18- to 30-year-olds vote November 2.
Voter turnout in contested Democratic primaries indicate a surge in youth voting - but Stroupe, chief of staff of Virginia's Center for Politics and a former congressional press secretary, remains sceptical. He predicts an increased turnout across the board.
"Anytime you have a self-reported poll, it's the political equivalent of a New Year's resolution," he said. "I would be surprised if we see an increase in youth voter participation that is unique to that demographic group."
A recent study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press suggests that entertainment celebrities can effectively attract young Americans to politics.
The study, released in January, found that 21 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds regularly relied on comedy shows for political news and 13 percent relied on late-night talk shows. Only 23 percent said they regularly relied on newspapers for political news.
Such shows - devoted primarily to satire rather than hard news - have thus entered the mainstream of US political discourse. One, Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," won a prestigious Peabody Award for its 2000 election programming and recently hosted appearances by both Kerry and Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie.
Both Kerry and Bush have also involved their daughters in an attempt to reach young voters. Bush's twin daughters Barbara and Jenna are 22. Kerry's daughter Alexandra is 30, and her sister, Vanessa, is 27.
However the popularity of entertainment as a source of information can be a double-edged sword, said Nojin Kwak, assistant professor of communications studies at the University of Michigan.
In a study published last month, Kwak found that young voters who relied primarily on programs like "The Daily Show" for political information were more likely to be cynical about the process and less likely to vote.
"Those shows tend to demobilise young voters because of tone and content," Kwak said.
Young people "are much less willing to take what is fed to them through the media without thinking it through," but that doesn't make them any less interested, responded Strell.
Hoplin said September 11 also defined his generation's attitude toward politics far more than any negative influences.
"For the first time in our lives it mattered to us who it was that sat behind the desk in the Oval Office," he said.
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