(Tampa International Airport) Ron Fournier of the Associated Press wrote a nice news/opinion piece based on the America’s Civic Health Index. It’s on the Yahoo news portal and elsewhere. Fournier begins:

WASHINGTON – It happens every election year: Pollsters slice and dice the electorate, identify an important new group and give those voters a fad-worthy monicker. Reagan Democrats. Angry Men. Soccer Moms.

Here’s a heads-up on what should be the dynamite demographic of 2008: “The Civic Core.”

That’s the name given to 36 million Americans who actively discuss society’s problems and work to solve them. These community-building citizens are both a key to the nation’s future and a valuable resource for political candidates.

And yet, with few exceptions, Democrats and Republicans alike are giving the Civic Core — and community service itself — short shrift.

Thirty-six million is a soft estimate, because the survey questions on which it is based are all matters of degree. You can be more or less involved, for example, in addressing problems in your neighborhood. Therefore, you may answer a yes/no question about such involvement differently depending on the context in which you are asked. However, I pushed for throwing out some kind of estimate, because I want candidates to realize that millions of Americans are heavily involved in civic work and care about their opportunities to participate. As Fournier says at the end of his article: “Microtarget that.”