Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau reaches out to young voters, but will they reach back?

The day before Justin Trudeau was swept into the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada in a coronation-style convention, a short YouTube video featuring a 10-year-old girl was posted to his website.

The video was of Valentina Grohovaz, an average Grade 5 student who wrote a speech for a class assignment in which she channels the passion she has felt while “waiting for a new hope to help us with problems we are facing as a country.”

This is a 10-year-old girl who is passionate about Canada, passionate about politics and about Justin Trudeau. The video is a four-minute declaration of support in which she begs classmates to consider supporting Trudeau.

“What a concept, actually having the option of voting for someone you like rather than simply choosing who you dislike the least,” Grohovaz says in the video.

It is safe to say the young Grohovaz did not vote for Trudeau in the leadership campaign, nor will she vote for him or his party in the next election. But in eight years, when she is old enough to participate in her first election, it seems Trudeau has her vote sewn up.

A great deal of ink has already been spilled about Justin Trudeau, who fought and claimed the keys to an entire political party at the age of 41. He grew up in the shadow of his father Pierre Trudeau, one of Canada’s most memorable leaders, and has been dismissed as too young and inexperienced to follow in his footsteps. Even now, as the Liberals have been dismissed to third-tier status and are fighting to retain its relevancy, desperate for a voice of renewal.

“Canada is a grand, yet unfinished project. And it is up to us, together with all Canadians, to build the country we want,” Trudeau said at his coronation on Sunday. “It is time for us to write a new chapter in the history of our country.”

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But Trudeau’s youth and charisma – his understanding of the values of Canada’s next generation and his ability to connect with them – are perhaps exactly what the Liberal party needs.

“I am very optimistic because of Justin,” former Liberal leader Stephane Dion told Yahoo! Canada News on Sunday. “He is so close to the people, to the young people, he connects with them. The party is mobilized and united. I think it is him. It is the way he is. I think it is his life experience.”

Trudeau’s leadership campaign was powered by youth. Driven by an inner circle of young allies and advisers and fueled by an army of 12,000 young volunteers, his message seems to have reached Millennials and even those younger than that, in a way most politicians fail to accomplish.

But there is a reason wheels keep spinning in Ottawa regardless of whether those seeking power manage to engage young Canadians. Elections Canada reports that while 61 per cent of eligible Canadians voted in the 2011 federal election, younger demographics came out if far lower numbers. Thirty-nine per cent of voters between 18 and 24 voted, and only 45 per cent of those between 25 and 34 cast a vote.

Jamie Biggar, executive director of the advocacy group Leadnow, told CTV News that young people don't vote because they feel separated from politics and turned off by the process.

It is that sense of youth dissatisfaction that Trudeau is focused on addressing. Whether his youthful appeal results in actual votes is yet to be seen, but Trudeau is approaching the issue with a positive state of mind.

“To the new generation of Canadians and to all those young people who do not feel involved, who feel disenfranchised. I have a very simple message for you. Your country needs you,” he said on Sunday.

“It needs your energy and your passion. It needs your idealism and your ideas, also. The movement that we have build over the past six months, it is your movement. It belongs to you. It is the movement with which we will change politics.”

It is too soon to say whether the strategy will pay dividends. A recent poll found that 48 per cent of Canadians already feel Trudeau is ready to stand as prime minister, but it is unclear if that support comes from young Canadians or all Canadians. And besides, any poll that predicts the result of an election two years in advance, let alone before party leaders have been crowned, should be taken with large grains of salt.

Still, it says something about Trudeau’s personal appeal. And, perhaps, whether the country is ready to accept a young leader.

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If Trudeau’s youthful appeal will be felt by any rival party it will likely be the NDP, who took steps to move toward the centre over the weekend. Under charismatic leader Jack Layton, the party support swelled during the 2011 election, resulting in the election of dozens of young representatives.

An Environics poll from last year found that Canadians between the ages of 19 and 29 were most likely to support the NDP. The poll found that 40 per cent of young Canadians said they would cast a vote for the NDP, whereas 24 per cent supported the Conservatives and 19 per cent supported the Liberals, at the time.

The poll was released in September 2012 - one month before Trudeau announced his bid for party leadership.

Matthew Dubé, a 24-year-old NDP MP, says his party isn’t an old party with a young face, but a young party that truly represents the values of the next generation.

"I think we all have our roles to play — to have all these young MPs that can go all over the country and interact with young people and get them involved in the debate. It's not just talking to them, it's talking with them," he told CBC News.

“It's one thing to be a younger leader, but also the respect that (NDP Leader Thomas) Mulcair has for young people and what they bring to the debate in Canadian politics means a lot to those people and that's what we believe is important going forward.”

Yes, Trudeau is young, but not as young as his appearance might suggest, or his critics would attest. At 41 years old he is the age Tony Blair was when he became the leader of the opposition in England’s parliament in 1994. He is two years the senior of Conservative Joe Clark when he was elected prime minister of Canada.

Trudeau is only a handful of years younger than upstart Stephen Harper was when he became leader of the official opposition in 2002. And, as the Globe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin pointed out in February, Trudeau has about the same amount of parliamentary experience as Harper had at that time. The same amount of real-world experience as well, if not more.

Trudeau has studies as a teacher and worked in his field. Harper, Martin points out, studied in economics but had “no real job experience in the discipline.”

“Although Mr. Harper likes to call himself an economist, he wasn’t. He had a graduate degree in economics but no real job experience in the discipline,” Martin wrote.

That argument will do little to satisfy the boo-birds who claim Trudeau is a tenderfoot who is not ready to lead. But at this point, the question is moot. Trudeau is the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, for whatever that is worth. In the next election, we will know whether he has been successful in rallying his young supporters.

And one or two elections after that, 10-year-old Valentina Grohovaz will almost certainly be casting her ballot for his Liberal party, gratefully supporting a leader she likes, rather than one she dislikes the least.

And more than likely, she won’t be alone.