How Chelsea woos young voters

How does Chelsea Clinton woo younger voters?

Based on her appearances in North Carolina so far, the former first daughter favors a casual, even wonky, approach. A few patterns Dome has seen:

1. Be casual. She dresses stylishly, but not formally. At rallies on college campuses today Clinton wore dark blue jeans and a smart gray jacket. She uses a handheld mic and no podium and answers questions rather than give a speech. Her language is more personal than political. Case in point: At N.C. State this morning, she called herself a "sort of a numbers dork" at one point. She frequently says "Oh gosh" at the number of questions.

2. She's young, too. She makes references to being young, although at a Young Democrats event Saturday and today at Peace College, Clinton self-deprecatingly noted that at 28, she feels old. At N.C. State, she mentioned that a friend recently returned from fighting in Iraq. On Saturday, she pointed out that her boyfriend, Marc Mezvinsky, was in the back row of the room. At Peace, she noted that she has a boyfriend and a dog and made a reference to her mother wanting her to have kids soon. "I still haven't figured out what I want to be when I grow up," she said jokingly.

3. Hit the youth issues... She talks about her mother's proposals to get rid of the much-hated FAFSA student aid form and expand loans for graduate school. She notes a proposed border fence would cut through the University of Texas at Brownsville campus, points out that college students often don't have health insurance during the summer, and talks about ending school fees around the world.

4. Don't talk down. She's not afraid to be wonky. Clinton occasionally uses words like "data points" and gets into the policy thicket explaining problems with how No Child Left Behind rates student success or international treaties that the Bush administration has not participated in. At times, she sounds like she could be leading a class discussion or late-night dorm argument.

Overall, Clinton's approach is low key, with none of the grandiloquent rhetoric of an Obama rally (or even Obama surrogate Cory Booker's speech on Saturday). Her one set piece is a quiet retelling of the story of a young Ohio woman without health insurance who died after being turned away from the hospital.

Based on the crowd response so far, the piece seems pretty effective, but Clinton does not milk it for emotion the way her father would.