When Michael Graves was 20 years old, a typical evening involved caking his face in skull makeup, donning a leather vest stained with fake blood and spitting out lyrics in front of hordes of moshing, screaming kids. For five years, Graves was the lead singer of the Misfits, a legendary punk band known for their bloody “fiend” costumes and horror-movie lyrics. In short, he was the perfect example of America’s radical liberal youth.

From the moment he left the stage, though, Graves was a devout Catholic and conservative voter.

Graves, now 29, was just one of a growing number of American youths defying the traditional stereotype of the young liberal. In recent years, the Democratic hold on the college-age demographic has weakened. If it releases altogether, they could be on the losing end of elections for years to come.

The mass influx of liberal votes from college campuses has become a myth, said Carrie Donovan, the youth director for the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).

“I think a lot of people still assume that college students are very liberal based on how young people used to be,” Donovan said. “It’s definitely not like that; the difference is only maybe five percentage points, not 30.”

A year ago, it seemed Democrats had lost college students altogether. A survey conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics (IOP) in October 2003 found that President Bush’s approval rating was higher among college students than with the rest of the populace. He led by seven points among college students over any Democratic challenger.

By Election Day, Bush’s support among college students fell, but IOP data suggests that it had more to do with the war in Iraq than the president’s conservative policies. Bush’s approval rating among college students slipped as disapproval of the war grew, but they still said he would “keep the country safer and more secure” than Kerry and favored his “clear stance on the issues,” according to the survey.

Although Democrats carried the youth vote in the 2004 election, young people are not the Democratic demographic they once were. According to exit polling data from the Voter News Service and CBS, senior citizens were more likely than those aged 18 to 29 to vote for Democrats in four of the five prior elections.

Yet there was a time when the idea of the liberal youth held true. It originated when the voting age was lowered to 18 during the Vietnam War, leading hordes of anti-war activists and potential draftees to the polls.

Through the early 1980s, young people were a cornerstone of the Democratic Party. The party won 18 to 29-year-olds in every election, and in 1976, Jimmy Carter won the youth vote by a wide enough margin to take the presidency despite losing every other age group.

In 1984, Ronald Reagan swept through his second campaign, taking 59 percent of the youth vote. That election, said University political science professor Michael Krassa, changed the face of conservatism for young people. Reagan made conservatives more likeable, Krassa said.

In subsequent years, fewer young people voted for Democrats. Krassa added that although there were more conservatives on campus, they still felt outnumbered. Because people in the minority are less likely to vote, the shift from liberal to conservative could be even greater than the voting data shows.

Part of the reason the trend has been overlooked is that it has happened over time. Krassa said the line between conservative and liberal has been shifting for decades.

“If Nixon ran for president today, it would have to be as a Democrat,” Krassa said. “His social policies were more liberal than Clinton’s.”

As young people shift, the ranks of the College Republicans are swelling. Almost 53,000 new members joined the organization in the time leading up to the election, said Doug McGregor, the deputy executive director of the College Republican National Committee (CRNC).

McGregor credited strong leadership for bringing young people together.

“The big thing has been this president and his vision drawing the students in, and then we as College Republicans get them involved,” McGregor said. “We were able to provide a real army.”

The College Democrats of America see the 2004 presidential election as a sign that college students are not going anywhere.

Dan Geldon, the College Democrats’ executive director, said John Kerry’s six-percent improvement over Al Gore showed that college students would be voting Democrat for years to come.

“As long as we keep spending time talking to them about the issues and as long as we keep offering a better vision for the future, college students will respond,” Geldon said.

But Kyle Keating, freshman in LAS, does not see this vision.

Like many young Republicans, Keating grew up in a conservative household and inherited his beliefs from his parents. He is now a member of College Republicans and has volunteered for several local Republican campaigns.

“A lot of times there’s a stereotype that college students have to be liberal because there’s a lot of freedom, but that just helped me affirm my beliefs,” Keating said. “There’s a lot more conservatives than people think.”

Even those that start out liberal may not leave school that way. Kelly Cole, freshman in engineering, was a Democrat through much of high school but was turned off before the 2004 election.

“I was raised in a Christian church surrounded by conservatives, but I was a liberal,” Cole said. “But the last presidential election was Hollywood gone politics. If Kerry is the face of Democrats, I don’t want to be associated with them.”

Other college students, like Isabella Dziubinski, are conservative by their religious nature. Dziubinski, a senior in LAS and a Pentecostal Christian, said her beliefs overrode all other issues.

“The word of God is God’s opinion on things, and I have to stand with the God I believe in,” Dziubinski said.

Greg Meves, the incoming president of the University’s College Republicans and a junior in LAS, said the party was successful when it got its views out to students instead of allowing them to base their opinions on what they hear from friends in the classroom.

Erin Janulis, the president of the University’s College Democrats, acknowledged the reasons that students turned to the Republican Party but said the shift would not be permanent.

“The world changes so quickly that individual people change by the minute,” Janulis said. “You can’t predict what will happen.”

If Democrats do eventually lose the student vote, it will not be for lack of effort. Liberal groups are fighting to keep the youth vote with edgy campaigns and personalities that will appeal to the younger generation.

One of those personalities, Pat Thetic, is almost the polar opposite of the Misfits’ former singer, Michael Graves. As the drummer for the left-wing punk band Anti-Flag, Thetic spent his summer on the Vans Warped Tour, a widely attended concert festival in the United States, and his autumn on the Rock Against Bush tour.

Thetic said the shift towards the right has stemmed from teenagers’ households.

“There are definitely more conservative kids all the time,” Thetic said. “The religious right is winning the battle, and that’s why we need to get people and bands out there talking about this and shift the tide back.”

To that cause, Thetic played for thousands of screaming youths nearly every day for five months, interspersing music with political chants and urges to get out and vote.

Thetic said the Warped Tour’s drawing power made it ideal to combat the conservative trends.

“I think Warped Tour is an amazing venue to get out ideas,” Thetic said. “A lot of young people can only go to one show a year, and it’s this one. It’s their one chance to get real information that’s not from some mainstream source.”

Anti-Flag was one of the first bands to join Punk Voter, a liberal group that attempts to draw rebellious, anti-establishment youths to the polls.

The organization puts on provocative shows with loud music, but Donovan emphasized the importance of communicating real issues beyond the flash.

John Kerry owed part of his margin of victory among youths to Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan voter drive that sent thousands of emails to young people about the draft, Donovan said.

Thetic said left-wing groups needed to connect with and inform youths to keep them in the fold.

“We want to reach out to people,” Thetic said. “I am a firm believer that everybody should have access to all the information to make decisions. There’s a battle, and we need to mobilize and inspire.”

Whether the liberal groups will succeed remains uncertain. Both Democrats and Republicans said they were confident college students were turning in their direction.

As young people become more of a swing group, they become a target for political groups and politicians on both sides, said Matt Streb, an assistant professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

“You would never have seen Ronald Reagan going on MTV, but that’s a regular stop for candidates now,” Streb said.

As political groups court young people and turnout fluctuates, experts say the youth vote will likely turn on a major event or dynamic personality.

If the trend continues and the youth vote becomes more conservative, the effects could be significant. If the youth vote had been divided evenly in the 2004 election, President Bush would have enjoyed a landslide victory.

As it were, young people alone may have given Kerry a crucial swing state. Youths in Pennsylvania made up 21 percent of the electorate and voted 60 to 39 percent in favor of the Massachusetts senator. At the end of the night, Pennsylvania went to Kerry by two percentage points. Had the youth vote been split, he would have lost.

In the long term, the effects of a conservative shift would be even greater. According to Krassa, people tend to lean more to the right as they get older. A generation that starts out conservative will only tip further over time.

“Remember, the people that are middle-aged and voting conservative today were once the 60s generation,” Krassa said.

For Graves, the future could hold a trip into war. The punk rocker joined the Marine Corps and will leave for basic training on Jan. 10, with a possible trip to Iraq or Afghanistan to follow.

Graves said he would put his music career on hold while he served his country. Until he leaves, he is publishing a solo album and continuing to write his conservative columns.

“I think conservatives can reach kids through somebody like me,” Graves said. “I think my feelings concerning family, God, the military and my pro-life stance, they fall in line with the conservative agenda, and they’re things kids can identify with.”