Turnout Rises, and Super Tuesday Confirms Huge Democratic Advantage Among Youth
The final numbers for the youth vote on Super Tuesday are in.
First, take a look at what turnout thus far tells us about the Democratic advantage among young voters. The data for 2000, 2004, and 2006 come from CNN exit polls. The data for 2008 is an projection of the Democratic advantage among young voters in November of 2008. The projection was determined by adding up the total number of young voters participating in the Democratic and Republican primaries thus far (Super Tuesday and previous contests all the way back to Iowa), and calculating the percent of the total number of voters that participated in the Democratic and Republican contests respectively. The data for this determination comes from CIRCLE.
As you can see, the Democratic advantage among young voters is huge and growing.
Partisan Breakdown of 18 - 29 Year Old Voters
This chart from CIRCLE's National Super Tuesday Fact Sheet (pdf) shows the actual turnout numbers in the Democratic and Republican Super Tuesday contests. It's a state-by-state representation of some of the data in the previous graph:
This next chart shows total youth turnout (Dem + Rep) in Super Tuesday states, compares turnout from 2000 to 2008, and notes the youth share of the electorate. Big take-away: youth turnout rate was up in every state for which comparative data exists.
Finally, a quick refresher on which candidate won the youth vote in each state on both the Republican and Democratic side. I've already discussed these results on the Democratic side.
On the Republican side, I thought it was interesting that Huckabee won the youth vote in more states than any other candidate, and he may even have won a larger share of the youth vote in raw numbers than either McCain or Romney. No offense to Ron Paul supporters, but more and more Huckabee looks like the youth candidate on the Republican side.
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Projections
I'm a believer in these projections, especially w/McCain as the GOP nominee. However, there's probably some kind of natural ceiling in terms of how big the Dem advantage can get here as parental and local-cultural influence is going to remain a constant.
What's interesting to me is that this pronounced political perspective is developing without the kind of deep divisions (so far) that people tend to associate with youth movements. That association is probably 1960's hangover bias anyway, but it's interesting because I don't see any backlash on the horizon.
In effect, we're looking at the potential for the Millennial generation to become solidly progressive in a way that could produce a generations-long governing majority, which you have to go back to FDR to really see in US history, I think.
Oh also
Also worth noting. We coldn't figure out how to show this in the graphs, but simultaneous with this partisan shift, the peak of the Millennial demographic wave is moving into politics. 2008 will see the largest number of eligible 18-year-old voters since 1972 when the voting age was originally lowered.
Basically, this is not only an age-rage which is coalescing on the left, it is also an age-range which rivals the Baby Boomers in sheer numbers.
Good point
This is a good point. I actually think this pretty much is the ceiling. At this point, you start bumping up against he number of young voters who are self-identified Republicans/conservatives. In other words - the base of the GOP youth, which we probably won't be able to touch, even with Obama.
McCain and his "independent/maverick" narrative pretty much ensure this.