The counts are in: youth voters between the ages of 18 to 29 turned out in more numbers than 2004, and more Democratic.
News sources immediately jumped on the question of just how influential the youth turnout was to Obama's victory last Tuesday. Youth turnout increased by 3.4 million since the 2004 presidential election, according to CIRCLE, a nonpartisan organization that researches the political engagement of young Americans.
Young voters favored Obama to McCain by 68 percent to 30 percent, a unprecedented age-gap. Over the past 30 years, the average gap was only 1.8 percentage points. This is the first election in which young voters significantly favored one candidate over another. Also, young voters represented 18 percent of overall voters in Tuesday’s election, according to the National Exit Polls (NEP) conducted by Edison/Mitofsky.
It seems that young people have finally done what they said they would do all along. For many, this was a first-time experience. And for many, the first time didn't hurt so bad.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment