primaries

CIRCLE has finally released their fact sheet summary of youth turnout in the presidential primary contests. The numbers are much the same as what we reported last week. Here's what you need to know:

• In the states for which data is available, 6.5 million young voters (17 - 29) participated in either the Democratic or Republican Presidential primaries.
• Overall turnout rose from 9% (recorded in 2000, the last comparable cycle), to 17%.
• This is the third consecutive cycle in which youth turnout increased.
• This is the first time youth turnout has increased three cycles in a row since 18 - 20 year olds were first granted the right to vote in 1971.
• In the 17 states for which comparable exit polling is available from 2000, all but one state (New York) saw an increase in youth turnout.
• Of those 17 states, 10 saw at least a 10 point jump in youth turnout (NH, MA, GA, MO, TX, TN, IA, MS, OH, OK).
• Obama captured the Democratic youth vote 60 - 38%.

Also remember from the Rock the Vote's fact sheet and last week's post mortem that young voter's share of the electorate rose from 9.4% in 2004 to 14.3% in 2008, and young voters participated in the Democratic primary over the GOP primary at a rate of 2 - 1.

The most interesting piece of new data in the CIRCLE report is the candidate breakdown in the GOP contest. More young Republicans voted against John McCain than voted for him, and he barely inched out Mike Huckabee to capture a plurality of youth votes among the top 4 candidates. As for Ron Paul - the so-called GOP youth candidate, he only received 10% of the youth vote. Can we finally put to rest the fiction that Ron Paul is the conservative youth candidate? At best he had a highly tech savvy core of youth supporters that amounted to very little at the polls.

It was reported yesterday that Congressman Paul is holding his own "shadow convention" this year. It will be interesting to see who shows up.

The AP just reported that Obama has clinched the nomination based on their calculations. It's the beginning of the end . . . finally.

While I was in Nashville, I didn't get a chance to watch the RBC meeting (seemingly streamed live via every broadcast and independent media outlet on the planet). Everyone at the conference was buzzing about it - making phone calls, checking their email and trying to keep up with the latest twist and turn.

Since I missed the whole thing, I'll turn you over to two very capable people who did watch it. First, watch Joe's always interesting take:

Then go read Emptywheel at FireDogLake, who was at the RBC meeting and live blogged the whole event. She has a great recap on exactly what the Michigan delegate compromise means and how it was reached.

• First, I've been remiss in reporting that Mike Lux at Open Left is calling on all netroots progressives to work their asses off to register high-school seniors before they graduate. He's even got some ideas on how it might work. - Open Left
• Hillary Rosen, former head of the RIAA (and proponent of taking students, seniors, and assorted toddlers to court over filesharing) is now running the political operation at Huffington Post. WTF? - Boing Boing
• The Democrats are proposing that we pay soldiers who are stop-lossed into service (aka back door draft). Sounds good to me. - Daily Kos
• Ben Adler gives us a brief history of Drinking Liberally on the week in which the organization celebrates its 5 year anniversary. Congrats to Justin and Matt for all their accomplishments. - The Politico
• Georgia10 takes a stab at outlining what Ted Kennedy means to the Millennial Generation. - Daily Kos
• What can we expect from Generation "Z" ? - Profy.com
• Google: Viacom's YouTube lawsuit threatens the net. - Mashable!
• And finally, Joe gives us a run-down on the state of the race and why it's OK that the Clinton campaign keeps chugging along. And congrats to Joe on scoring the AlterNet gig. I believe this means that all 3 people who served as Web/Communications Director at MFA are now in the employ of AlterNet.

As we wind down the primary season, there is less and less reliable data about youth turnout and pretty much no comparative data from previous cycles. It's been a long time since we've come this far into the process.

Nevertheless, here's what we do know from CIRCLE and CNN exit polling:

I'll note that while there is no comparative data, the youth "share of the electorate" in both states is higher than the 2004 average of 9%.

Clinton won the youth vote handily in Kentucky, pulling in 54% of the 18 - 29 vote to Obama's 41%. 2% were "uncommitted." She won even greater margins among white youth.

Obama won the youth vote handily in Oregon, pulling in 71% to Clinton's 29%. He won by the same margin among white youth.

Political junkie that I am, I cannot wait for this thing to be over. Just a few more weeks . . .

So there were some elections yesterday (the madness never stops), and I figure we should at least mention them here.

In West Virginia, Sen. Clinton won in a landslide (as predicted). She defeated Obama 67 - 26%, and she even captured young voters who chose her 59 - 35%. I haven't checked, but I believe this is only the third state in which Clinton won the 18 - 29 demographic. Young voters were 14% of the Democratic electorate. Unfortunately, there is no data from previous cycles against which to compare that, however, based on averages, it is likely that young voters increased their share over previous cycle.

In a race that saw major coverage in the netroots, Scott Kleeb won his primary agains uber-DINO (Democrat in Name Only) against Tony Raimondo. Scott will now compete for the seat vacated by Chuck Hagel in November. This was a good win for Democrats and for young voters. Scott is a huge friend of the youth organizing community and many of you are probably familiar with his wife, Jane Fleming Kleeb, who is an all around youth-organizing rock star and blogs here at Future Majority occasionally under the name of her organization, the Young Voter PAC. Jane blogged the race all day yesterday and you can read her dispatches here.

Finally, we also won a long-shot race in Mississipi. In a deep-red distrinct, Travis Childers defeated his Republican opponent Greg Davis. This was the third special election in a row in which a Democrat defeated a Republican in a red district, and it's an indication of just how big a wave we might see in November. It's also another reason why we need to maximize the youth vote in every state. If victories like this are possible in the deepest or red districts, 50 million Millennials can help make this one of the biggest landslides we're likely to see in our lifetime.

For more, don't miss Joe's take on yesterday's elections and what it all means:

• Will Ralph Nader poach youth votes from the Democrats this year? - Chronicle of Higher Education
• Will John McCain poach youth votes from the Democrats this year? - The Politico
• Kat Barr from Rock the Vote interviews me and reviews Youth to Power. - WireTap
• Tim Fernholz has a tough but fair review of Youth to Power. - Campus Progress
• 17 year old Pennsylvanians are fighting for the right to cast primary ballots if they will be 18 by election day. - Fair Vote
• Obama hits McCain for failing to support the Webb GI Bill. - TPM Election Central
• Bob Herbert gets hip to the economic plight of Millennials - New York Times
• Former candidate George McGovern has an interesting solution to bring the primaries to an amicable end. - New York Times
• Along a number of indicators, the civic engagement gap between college and non-college youth has widened since the 1970s. - Peter Levine
• Hip Hop youth organizing is going local and deeper in 2008. - Boston Globe

Two states and our nation's capital all head to the polls today to cast their ballot for the Democratic nominee. Here's the baseline for each state, courtesy of CIRCLE:

Washington D.C.: (pdf)

Youth Population: 99,440
Youth Share of Population: 25%
White Youth: 44%
Black non-Hispanic: 48%
College Student: 19%

Maryland: (pdf)

Youth Population: 804,880
Youth Population Share: 21%
2004 Share of the Electorate: 8%
White Youth: 54%
Black non-Hispanic: 36%
Other: 9%
College Student: 24%

Virginia: (pdf)

Youth Population: 1,057,799
Youth Population Share: 20%
2004 Share of the Electorate: 8%
White Youth: 67%
Black non-Hispanic Youth: 24%
Other: 9%
College Student 18%

CIRCLE has a new fact sheet (pdf) that serves as an excellent refresher course on the youth vote so far in this nomination contest.

I've pulled out a few of the more compelling charts as a reminder of what we've seen so far. There is plenty more data in the full fact sheet.

Here's a view of turnout and share of the electorate of the youth vote compared to previous years. Note that this is for the Democrats and Republicans combined, and that in all the previous contests, the number of youth voting in the Democratic contest has outstripped the number participating in the GOP contest:

Here's a summary of how young voters in both parties have cast their ballots:

And my favorite chart, as this in part depicts the future of our country and the makings of a progressive majority, check out the race/ethnicity breakdown of the youth vote in each party's nominating contests:

For more information about the previous contests, you can check out my previous coverage of each state here: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Michigan, Florida, South Carolina.

In anticipation for today's Super (Fat) Tuesday contests in 22 states, I've pulled together some baseline data for each state. Unfortunately, it's not much.

I've looked over the 2004 exit polls from CNN and pulled out the share of the electorate for youth where possible. Unfortunately there isn't even that much data for a lot of states. I've also made a note as to which states have some form of Election Day Registration. It will be interesting to compare turnout in EDR vs. non-EDR states.

Later tonight I'll repost this chart and fill in turnout, share of the electorate, and data on each candidate's youth support as much as I am able. Hopefully that will be a useful substitute until CIRCLE can finish the monster task of crunching data from all 22 states.