Reagan Wooing Youth Vote For Gop

WASHINGTON — The oldest president in U.S. history and the youngest members of the nation's electorate have forged one of the strongest bonds in American politics.

Mindful of that, Ronald Reagan has started to court young people on a regular basis in the hope that his immense popularity with first-time voters can be transferred into a lasting allegiance to the Republican Party after he leaves the political scene.

The Democratic Party has been the dominant political force in the country for the last 50 years, in part because it has consistently won over the largest share of new voters. But that trend has been reversed under Reagan and has encouraged Republican strategists to think that they may be able to nurture the youth vote to help the GOP regain majority status in U.S. politics.

Reagan is the key.

The President plans to meet with groups of high school and college students about once a week for at least the next two months to maintain his special relationship with them and to preach his conservative philosophy. On May 13, for example, he met at the White House with a group of high school seniors

from North Carolina, and last week he met with another group of students in a session that was televised live to high schools across the country.

"In our lifetimes, there are not many political realignments, but in the last four years there has been a massive change in the political chessboard," says Richard Wirthlin, a Republican pollster who conducts surveys regularly for the Reagan White House. "Whether the change endures or not is still

uncertain."

*

During Reagan's re-election campaign in 1984, it was widely reported that young voters constituted one of the President's most solid blocs of supporters. And recent polling by Wirthlin suggests that Reagan's following among that group is even higher today.

In 1984, according to a Wirthlin poll, voters under age 25 approved of Reagan by a ratio of 67 percent to 31 percent. In April 1986, according to a new Wirthlin poll, that group approved of Reagan's performance by a ratio of 79 percent to 20 percent.