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MSNBC Exit Polls Fantasyland. No Word on the Unicorn Vote

And here it is - our first major, negative youth vote story of the post election period, courtesy of MNSBC: Young Voters Not Essential To Obama Triumph. Now, I don't want to argue that young voters were the most important voting block of all voting blocks, or anything else so grand. The electorate can be sliced and diced in so many ways to make it appear as if one group or another cast the deciding ballots. But the way MSNBC writer Tom Curry goes about proving this valid point does a disservice to the facts and downplays the important role that young voters did play

But wait a minute — would Obama have won anyway without, for instance, younger voters?

AnaMaria Arumi, who directs the exit poll desk for NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo, has done the calculations based on the exit poll data and here is what she found: On a state-by-state level, when she re-ran the numbers as if there were no voters under 30, the only states that would switch to Republican presidential candidate John McCain are Indiana and North Carolina.

Without younger voters, Obama would still have won the 270 electoral votes he needs to become the next president.

To summarize - in fantasy land where young voters didn't exist, Obama still won the election. Here's the problem - we don't live in fantasy land, and removing young voters from the electorate doesn't accurately measure the impact of the record gains that Obama made in moving young voters' partisan loyalty. In order to measure that impact, you'd have to compare Obama's margins among young voters on Tuesday to the potential outcome had the youth vote divided their votes at along the same lines that they did in previous presidential contests, when the youth vote was traditionally more evenly divided.

Earlier this week, James Carville did just that and here's what he had to say:

Exit polling indicates that Mr Obama won two-thirds of those voting under 30 years old against 32 per cent for John McCain. Compare that with a 54-45 margin for John Kerry in 2004 and a 48-46 margin for Al Gore in 2000. Consider this: if young people had voted for Democrats at about the same proportion of the overall electorate (52-46) as they had voted as recently as 2000 for Mr Gore and for many cycles prior, Mr Obama would not have won North Carolina or Indiana. Young voters also provided the margin of victory in key battleground states such as Florida, Virginia and Ohio. The youth vote expanded the map for Mr Obama; it put him over the top in states not won by Democrats in decades.

And let's not forget the most important fact of all. Polling and voting do not happen in a vacuum. As a colleague noted to me in an email exchange about Curry's piece:

No young voters = no young volunteers = no outstanding field operation = President McCain

The polling and voting cannot be separated from the efforts that caused them.

Are young voters the only voting block that made the difference for Sen. Obama? No, but they were an unquestionably important piece of the puzzle both in the voting booth and out in the field. More than that, they are the largest living generation in America and their loyalties shifted starkly to the left thanks to Sen. Obama. As long as we continue to engage them, that will have positive ramifications for Democrats up and down the ballot in many elections to come.

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November 7th, 2008 12:45pm
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Both Carville and Curry MAKE

Submitted by Xica on Sat, 2008-11-08 21:38.

Both Carville and Curry MAKE THE EXACT SAME POINT that the youth vote made the difference in North Carolina and Indiana, and ONLY in those states. But for these equal statements you say Carville is a saint and Curry is a sinner! What are you spinning here and why?

Carville

Submitted by Michael Connery on Sat, 2008-11-08 21:59.

Carville's methodology is more sound, and you are conveniently omitting this sentence from Carville:

Young voters also provided the margin of victory in key battleground states such as Florida, Virginia and Ohio.

Nope The vote in FL went

Submitted by Xica on Sun, 2008-11-09 14:01.

Nope
The vote in FL went 51 for Obama, 47 for McCain, a 4 point lead. If the voting age were 30, Obama STILL would have had a 1 point lead. In OH, he would have still had a 2 point lead; In VA he still would have had a 1 point lead.

This is a HUGE win for Obama - meaning middle aged white folk voted FOR him too! Meaning he will get a chance to LEAD rather than taking the 50 + 1 majority that Karl Rove was so fond of. This is a GOOD thing y'all! Not a slam against youth - but rather the point that it's BIGGER than any one group! Stop playing righteous victims of a "non-attack" and CELEBRATE!

This is a map of the

Submitted by Michael Connery on Sun, 2008-11-09 14:09.

Obama-EV

This is a map of the election if young people in 2008 split their votes as they did in 2004, put together by a College Democrat officer. I haven't posted it to the front page because I have not fact checked it yet. But his analysis indicates that you are wrong.

Look, this is a YOUTH VOTE blog. The purpose is to cover the role that YOUTH played in the election. That include how the media reports on youth turnout. If you've read any more posts on this website than this single one you keep commenting on, you would know that I regard the narrative as immensely positive thus far, and that I'm much less concerned with youth "claiming credit" for Obama's win than I am in setting up young people to be a highly regarded and sought-after constituency in future elections so that the high youth turnout for Democrats we've seen in recent years becomes a trend, not an historical blip.

It's an entirely different

Submitted by Xica on Sun, 2008-11-09 14:21.

It's an entirely different analysis - not that what I said was wrong.

This guy is saying - "what if" youth voted in the republican trend that all groups did in 2004, rather than what all groups did in 2008.

I'm following the "what if" the voting age was 30 scenario.

It's all "what if" -- but you mock one and not the other. Whatever's convenient to who pays you.

Politics as usual rather than any sort of intellectual integrity.

And my entire point is that

Submitted by Michael Connery on Sun, 2008-11-09 14:26.

And my entire point is that Curry's and your hypothesis - that we remove the youth vote entirely from the electorate - doesn't tell us anything meaningful.

The whole significance of the youth vote this year lies in the shift in partisan loyalties.

The whole significance of

Submitted by Xica on Sun, 2008-11-09 14:43.

The whole significance of this election was that there was a HUGE partisan shift across ALL groups - nationally 7 points away from the GOP towards the Dems.

What we don't know the answer to yet is - is this real or just because the GOP was depressed and stayed home and the Dems were enthusiastic and energized?

This matters because now - with really tough times ahead and nothing as galvanizing as an election to rally folks - will the Dems be able to pull together or will they do the same old, same old balkanization routine.

The only way to definitively

Submitted by Xica on Sun, 2008-11-09 15:01.

The only way to definitively answer the questions of what relative impacts of different groups were is to run the regressions. And the data sets are not yet out there to do that! Which is why everyone's using funky methods. Making these sorts of arguments is why no one trusts science, statistics or polls. Which is too bad, because they're basically right. But few people take the time to learn what's necessary. So when you stand on a soap box and declare that what Curry said was wrong and what Carville said was right - even though they both made the same points - it's just feeds into the general revulsion against careful thinking. Stoke the fire - make a bad guy - raw emotion. We'll NEVER progress from this place. It MUST be from a more reasoned, grounded and real place, or else this too will evaporate

You need to actually check

Submitted by Xica on Sat, 2008-11-08 23:21.

You need to actually check your facts. Youth helped in these states but not at greater rates than did Blacks, the middle aged, the working class, etc. or even Latinos in Indiana.

The point of this election - the brilliancy of this moment - is that it's a HUGE coalition. It was not soley attributable to any single group, but to a sea change. And THAT's how change happens.

Which is why I said

Submitted by Michael Connery on Sat, 2008-11-08 23:27.

Which is why I said this:

Are young voters the only voting block that made the difference for Sen. Obama? No, but they were an unquestionably important piece of the puzzle both in the voting booth and out in the field.

Curry's point was to dismiss the youth vote. My point is to say that they made a difference in some states and that Curry's methodology was ridiculous, hence the snark in my post.

As for which states Obama would/would not have won without youth - I've seen conflicting reports from at least three sources at this point - including Carville and Curry. No one will know for sure until we see the CPS data that comes out in the spring.

Carville and Curry come to

Submitted by Xica on Sat, 2008-11-08 23:49.

Carville and Curry come to the same conclusions.

Whoever wrote Curry's headline was a bit flip. But if you know anything about journalism you know that he's probably not the one who wrote it. Curry's actual piece was very clear and evenhanded.

"But for a contrast, take a state where McCain did very well, such as Oklahoma. In the Sooner State, just as in Virginia, about one-fifth of the voters were under age 30. And McCain won 60 percent of them. Not surprisingly McCain carried Oklahoma by a big margin, 32 percentage points.

So just as important as the differences between younger and older voters was simply where the voter lived: young people in Oklahoma tended to vote for McCain; young people in Virginia did not.

The problem for McCain is that there simply weren’t enough young voters in other states who were like the young voters in Oklahoma.

And younger voters in a heavily Democratic state such as California were not decisive in the outcome, just as their older aunts and uncles in California were not either."

If you must know - the BIGGEST shift in votes from 2004 to 2008 was in the 30 point shifts more democratic of whites with college education living on both coasts, who slightly favored Bush in 2004 and completely came out for Obama last week.

But it still doesn't matter. I'm just sick of the snark, period. Stand down, please! Build something rather than shooting off the bow.

Obama won! It's fantastic! Yes WE did!

Youth came out! The Suburbs came out! Old people came out! (and got over their racism!) My grandmother started out the season completely aghast at the thought of Obama and then -- after watching the debates and seeing how incredibly smart and even he was -- ended up voting for him! Shocking herself and all of us in the process. The point is CHANGE!! Not promoting any particular brand of identity politics. But that the whole collective changes.

Not past tense

Submitted by Craig Berger on Sun, 2008-11-09 03:39.

I don't think Obama wants us to get to the past tense quite so quickly.

The whole premise of Obama's campaign is to get us past the campaign and into active citizenship. The point is to get us all to start working on solutions to the problems we face.

Yes, we did a great job of organizing so that he was a viable candidate. He did a great job of allowing us to do all this. But we have a long road ahead.

President-elect Obama expects more from us than to call the job done:

I am running for President, right now, because of what Dr. King called the fierce urgency of now. This moment is too important to sit on the sidelines. Our country faces determined enemies abroad, and definitive challenges at home. But I have no doubt that in the face of these odds, people who love their country can change it. That is why I am running for President. That is why I’m determined to reach out - not just to Democrats, but to Independents and Republicans who want to move in a new direction. And that is why I won’t just ask for your vote as a candidate - I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am President of the United States.

You invent straw men to

Submitted by Xica on Sun, 2008-11-09 11:39.

You invent straw men to "defeat." NOBODY is saying "job done." In fact I said it's time to move on to building things!

My point continues to be that the "change" is bigger than identity politics - I also gave a personal example of how the change has been (and continues to be) much broader than "youth."

I challenged you that the article you called "a negative youth vote story" was actually not, that instead it made the same points you favored.

You tacitly acknowledge each of my points (by largely ignoring them) and then recast and recast your argument by putting up a straw man, claiming it's mine. Sloppy nonsense.

I get it now - it's you blog and your reality. You get to set your rules here and be a muckraker if you want to. Enjoy your invective.

My

Submitted by Michael Connery on Sun, 2008-11-09 13:54.

I don't know to what strawmen you are referring - I directly addressed your critiques of my post in both of my responses to you.

I don't see how you can say with a straight face that Curry's argument is not creating a negative narrative about youth when one of the main theses of the piece is to say that youth were irrelevant.

Yes, "Change" is bigger than youth. But my job is to convince skeptical lawmakers, party officials, fundraisers, bloggers, candidates, and yes - journalists - that the youth vote is real and needs to be paid attention to: with press coverage, campaign and donor dollars, and on the stump. You may not like identity politics, but the Democratic Party is a constituency-based organization, and like it or not, we need advocacy groups that fight on behalf of youth. Otherwise we'll never get a seat at the policy table. We lacked such infrastructure during the Clinton and Bush years and we got steamrolled while other constituency groups saw politicians pay attention to their needs.

Myself - and this blog - function as a communications arm lobbying on behalf of young people in progressive politics and I think I'm fairly successful in that respect. Others are working directly with the future administration, or with the larger progressive movement, on the policy aspect to this. I'll support their efforts to the best of my ability once they get moving. But for now, the election and youth turnout are still very much the story. That narrative is still forming and I'll do everything I can to guide it so that young people can grab as much power as possible within the Democratic Party, and to ensure that youth are an integral piece of future Democratic campaigns up and down the ballot.

In this column, in print

Submitted by Xica on Sun, 2008-11-09 14:13.

In this column, in print above, I see it was your colleague who claimed I was saying that analysis was "past tense," which is of course a straw man.

You might be more effective in your job if you spin from truth rather than hyperbole.

Rising tides raised all boats and basically, the age distribution of voters looks the same as it did in 2004!

In 2004, 9% of the electorate was 18-24; in 2008 their percentage grew by ONE POINT to 10%. This single percentage point is pulled from the 40-49 year olds.

AGE OF VOTERS
(Read numbers vertically)

2004 2008 Change
18-24 9 10 1
25-29 8 8 0
30-39 18 18 0
40-49 22 21 -1
50-64 27 27 0
65+ 16 16 0

What does shift is the vote preference of each group. Obama got his widest margin by age groups among those under 30 - where he won two-thirds of the vote. He also won the thirtysomethings 54-44, and tied McCain among the fortysomethings. Obama outperformed Kerry in 2004 with all age groups EXCEPT seniors. His biggest gains were among 25-29 year olds.

Obama McCain Dem ad over 2004
18-24 66 32 11
25-29 66 31 17
30-39 54 44 7
40-49 49 49 5
50-64 50 49 3
65+ 45 53 -1

However, let me give you some clues in how you might better lobby your constituents, even though it might be against your funded objectives. Obama's biggest leads among groups is actually among whites with college educations. Obama made 30+ point gains among college educated whites on both coasts, A 17-point gain among them in the Midwest, and only a 2-point gain among college educated whites in the South.

WHITE COLLEGE EDUCATED VOTERS, BY REGION

OBAMA MCCAIN DEM ADVANTAGE
OVER 2004
EAST 57 42 37
MIDWEST 48 49 17
SOUTH 32 66 2
WEST 53 44 34

I'd appreciate it if you

Submitted by Michael Connery on Sun, 2008-11-09 14:24.

I'd appreciate it if you actually read this whole blog - not just this one post - before making such sweeping statements. All that you are talking about in this last comment have been covered extensively - and with more context wrt this election, and the field of youth organizing - on this blog.

You might also be more effective in bringing me around to your point of view if you didn't imply that I was a liar.

I just read though your

Submitted by Xica on Sun, 2008-11-09 14:35.

I just read though your other posts, and no, this data is not presented.

But you've made your point - you have your job to do, and that's what you will do.

It's amazing that you read

Submitted by Michael Connery on Sun, 2008-11-09 14:45.

It's amazing that you read over 1000 posts in 15 minutes.

I've covered Obama's incredible shift in support among young white voters since Kerry lost that group to Bush. I've covered the importance (or lack thereof) of share of the electorate data. And I've covered the significance of college vs. noncollege youth outreach to no end on this blog.

I think I'm done with this conversation.

No I have not been reading

Submitted by Xica on Sun, 2008-11-09 14:50.

No I have not been reading you for months.

I presented data from the exit poll and reviewed what you wrote from the exit polls, and no you did not address these themes from that data source.

Perhaps the data I shared with you will be of some service to you, but most likely not.

Best of luck.