The excitement of the Iowa caucuses died down two months ago, but in its wake was left something that could change the face of politics — a sharp surge in the number of young voters.

According to entrance polls taken by Edison/Mitofsky, young voter turnout quadrupled in the Iowa caucuses between 2000 and 2004. Approximately 21,000 people under the age of 30 participated in the 2004 caucuses. In 2000, only 5,500 young voters participated.

Some ISU students believe a reason for the increase in younger voters comes from anger toward President Bush.

Hannah Schoenthal-Muse, president of the ISU Democrats, said there are students who entered politics solely to get Bush out of the White House. She said presidential candidates like Howard Dean — who had more than 12,000 university students volunteer for his campaign — recruited many new voters by tapping into their dislike of Bush.

“They were so upset by the state of our country they decided we needed a change,” she said. “The Howard Dean campaign definitely pulled in new voters, as everybody knows.”

Other students, like Brandon Gray, believe the new voters came from student clubs that register new voters.

Gray, junior in journalism and mass communication, is an intern for The New Voters Project — the largest nonprofit grassroots organization in the country — which encourages young people to vote through registration drives and voter pledge forms. He joined the nonpartisan effort to register voters last semester.

The group aims to have 50,000 new young Iowa voters.

“People still think students aren’t involved in politics, which is no longer the case,” Gray said. “Now we’ll have to go out and vote in order to prove we’re involved in democracy.”

In 2000, only 21 percent of ISU freshmen said being informed about politics was important, compared to 60 percent in 1966, according to a survey conducted by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at UCLA.

In 2004, the figure is up to 29 percent.

New student voters will have a strong impact in the presidential election since they’re funneling into both the Republican and Democratic parties, said Steffen Schmidt, university professor of political science. He said student voters were as polarized about Bush as the general public.

Schoenthal-Muse agreed the polarized student voters would make a close race even closer.

“These new voters will make it a very tight race,” she said. “Both parties should be happy they have all these new voters.”

This resurgence of student voting will be vital for Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, and President Bush in November. With the two presidential candidates statistically tied in many national polls, Democrats and Republicans are fighting for the student vote, Schmidt said.

He said he thinks many new voters will head to the polls this November because “with the war in Iraq and the outsourcing of jobs, this is a high-stakes election.”