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Obama to target millennials with economic pitch

President Barack Obama attends a meeting with senior military leadership including Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey at the Pentagon on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
President Barack Obama attends a meeting with senior military leadership including Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey at the Pentagon on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) President Barack Obama attends a meeting with senior military leadership including Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey at the Pentagon on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama is targeting his midterm election economic message to young people born after 1980, a cohort that has shown itself to be reluctant to vote in nonpresidential contests.

Obama will promote his economic policies Thursday at Cross Campus, a Santa Monica, California, hub for startup companies and entrepreneurs. Obama is highlighting policies such as college aid and health care that officials say have especially benefited members of the millennial generation.

Millennials are young people roughly born between 1980 and the mid-2000s. They represent a third of the U.S. population and many came of age during the Great Recession.

White House officials say Democrats in close Senate contests must mobilize these voters, many of whom supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 but sat out the midterm election in 2010.