As Democrats risk losing their grip on Congress to rival Republicans in next month's elections, party members are struggling to rekindle enthusiasm among a key bloc - the young.
The youth vote helped propel Barack Obama into the White House in 2008, but with the economy floundering, the Afghan war in its 10th year, and anger at unfulfilled government promises, enthusiasm for the Democrats has dampened.
"Hey! Are you registered to vote?" members of the Young Democrats at the University of Virginia cried out to students heading into the cafeteria.
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Adam Gillenwater, who heads the campus Young Democrats, sat at a table with a small team of volunteers and forms to register students on the spot. Behind his dark glasses stamped "UDems," he pushed his message.
"Hey! Are you registered to vote?" Gillenwater repeated.
One student stopped briefly at the table. "I have class in, like, 12 minutes. Give me a few forms I'll hand them over to some friends," she said, before rushing off.
"I was already registered back home," said a student named Zoe Hardy. "But I re-registered here because things I vote on here affect me more than back home. I was going to vote for a Democrat anyway."
Others, like Chelsea Turner, were more guarded about their voting preferences. "It's convenient to do it here," she said simply.
Registrations began to add up -- 25 in just two hours, Gillenwater said.
Historically, young people tend to vote Democrat, while older voters lean towards the Republicans.
And the university, founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson -- considered the founder of the Democratic Party -- has been a key source of support for party candidates, including local congressman Tom Periello.
Periello and his Republican rival Robert Hurt are running virtually neck-and-neck in an October 6 survey conducted by the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill.
Volunteer Krista O'Connell rushed off to photocopy more forms.
"It's extremely important to register voters here on the campus because we want to keep Tom Periello in office," said O'Connell.
She supported the congressman because he has voted for student-friendly measures, including health care reform, she said.
Periello narrowly won his election to the 435-seat House of Representatives two years ago, so "if he's going to win again, we need to have the same excitement as in 2008 among the students," Gillenwater said.
All the seats in the House are in play in the November 2 mid-term congressional polls, while 37 seats in the 100-seat Senate are up for grabs.
'Turning up the heat'
Analysts say the Democrats could well lose their majority in the House, but are more likely to keep control in Senate. So the stakes are high.
Next week "we'll be starting to turn up the heat on the persuasion effort," said Young Democrats vice-president Rex Young. "We'll make sure everybody knows where to vote, how to vote."
Young Republicans are invisible on campus. Contacted by e-mail, they said that there was only a handful of volunteers available to make phone calls in favor of Periello's rival Hurt.
In a September poll, the Pew Research Center noted a marked lack of enthusiasm among young voters compared to both 2008 and 2006 -- which could spell defeat for many Democrats on November 2.
Nevertheless Democrats are banking on the young.
Just steps away from campus, at a Periello campaign site, volunteers in their late teens feverishly prepared for the final days of the campaign.
"Registering voters can make a difference no matter how young they are," said Periello communications director Jessica Barba. "Here on the campus we are aggressively registering voters."
