Super Tuesday

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.

Clinton pollster Mark Penn is playing the expectations game. Today he released a memo to "interested parties" explaining what the Super Tuesday results mean.

I found this statement particularly ballsy:

b) Hillary can win the youth vote. Hillary swept the youth vote in California and Massachusetts, two states that can be a bellwether for how young people will vote in the general election.

Nice try, but exit polling shows Clinton winning the youth vote 51 - 47 percent in California, and 49 - 48 percent in Massachusetts. Neither of those qualifies as a sweep. A more accurate description would be "Hillary scraped out a win."

In California, this seems to be due to the fact that the number of young Latinos equaled the number of young whites as a share of the electorate (both at 6%). Clinton outperformed Obama among young Latinos to a slightly greater degree than he outperformed her among young whites. So that might account for most of her win among California youth.

Massachusetts is more of an aberration. It's true that when you break out the youth vote into older/younger cohorts, differences emerge. Hillary did quite well in Massachusetts among 18 - 24 year olds, who were 7% of the electorate, and Obama got more support among 25 - 29 year olds, who were 6% of the electorate. Their percentages among these two groups were practically mirror images of each other, and both could equally lay claim to "sweeping" their demographic.

The most surprising thing about Massachusetts is that it reversed the normal partisanship patterns among the two youth demographics. Normally Clinton wins the older Millennials (when she wins youth at all) and Obama the younger. Honestly, I have no explanation for this and I'd love to hear any theories others have. This could be to what Penn is referring in his memo, but he's playing so fast and loose with his terminology that he deserves to be called out on this. Especially since he's a pollster who should be sensitive and responsible about the way he describes these demographics.

At the end of the (very long) day, Clinton and Obama basically tied among the youth vote in Californian and Massachusetts. And in almost every other state it is Sen. Obama who has the legitimate claim to "sweeping" the youth vote. The only state in which Clinton can legitimately claim to have swept the youth vote is Arkansas, where she won 61 - 37 percent. Penn makes no mention of that because he knows, as her home state, the win is meaningless in terms of shifting the media narrative around his candidate. It doesn't spin, so it gets left out.

So, no, Mark Penn. Clinton did not sweep the youth vote.

Updated at 3:40pm to reflect additional state returns.

Updated at 12:30 to reflect changes to the exit polling.

CIRCLE still has not posted results from Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Deleware, and New Mexico. And there seems to be no data at all available for all four of the Super Tuesday states that employed election day registration (Alaska, Idaho, Minnesota and North Dakota). But here's what we know so far about yesterday's youth turnout.

It was up, and in some states up big.

Youth turnout quadrupled in Tennessee. It tripled in Georgia, Missouri and Oklahoma, and it doubled in Massachusetts. There were, however, some states that didn't fare so well. In New York, youth turnout flatlined while turnout for the 30+ demographics dropped by 10 points, creating a net decline in voter turnout in the state.

As a share of the Democratic electorate, young voters increased their share in every state for which comparable data is available.

In most states, that increased turnout was to the advantage of Barack Obama, who won the youth vote in 13 12 of the 15 states for which data is currently available. The margin by which Obama carried young voters in those states varied wildly. In some states, like Georgia, he maintained his towering advantage over Clinton among young voters, and in Missouri, where he won by a mere 10,000 votes, young voters may well have been the difference in his campaign. In other states, though, like California, Clinton cut that advantage down to just a few points. Clinton actually won California. Guess the CNN exit polls are still adjusting.

Regardless of which candidate carries the nomination next month, that increased turnout will be a big advantage for Democrats in the general election. In Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York and Tennessee combined, 458,000 more young people voted in the Democratic contest than the Republican. The actual amount varied widely from state to state with Connecticut at the low end (~19,000 more Democratic youth participants) and New York at the high end (~203,000 more).

The one exception to this rule thus far was Oklahoma, in which 10,000 more young voters participated in the Republican primary than the Democratic primary.

All the data available thus far on youth turnout is pulled together in the chart below.

A quick word on methodology and data sets. In the chart below, the share of the electorate data and the turnout data come from two different sources (CNN and CIRCLE, respectively).

The Share of the Electorate data represents the youth vote share of the Democratic electorate - not the statewide electorate as a whole. The data on turnout represents total youth turnout across the state - both Democratic and Republican voters combined.

If you write about this or cite it, don't mix the apples and the oranges.

Update: For final results and a more complete version of the chart below, go here.
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I'm getting ready to head down to The Tank for their Super Fat Tuesday party.

Use this as an open thread to discuss the results and what you are seeing in the states.

Around 9pm Eastern time I'll be heading home to start blogging the results. After that, I don't plan on going to sleep until the whole chart (below) is complete.

Warning: numbers subject to change as CNN updates their polling data.

Update: As of midnight, the first draft of this chart is online. I'll now go back and start updating as CNN updates their exit polls.

Update: The chart is now current as of 1am.

Update: CNN hasn't updated their polling in the last hour, and none of the state parties aside from Alabama have posted vote totals, so I think this has gone as far as I can take it tonight.

A few thoughts - Most important, in every state for which I have comparative data, the youth turnout as a share of the electorate increased by anywhere from 1 - 7 percent. That is HUGE.

Second, Obama, for the most part, maintained his lead over Clinton among young voters. The exception was in states that Clinton dominated. Also interesting - no state with EDR had exit or entrance polling, so those comparisons I wanted to do are moot for now.

I'll be back on early tomorrow, updating the data, and hopefully finding out more data. I don't know when CIRCLE is planning on releasing their numbers, but as soon as they do, I'll post about it.

I'm beat. 'Till tomorrow.

MTV is giving its citizen-vlogger corps, Street Team '08, it's first real workout today. Vloggers in all of the Super Tuesday primary states are on the ground all day streaming video interviews and writing up blog posts in an attempt to give a local, youth-centric view of today's elections. The entire effort is being catalogued and housed on the Choose of Lose website, which is running a neat map feature to let you follow the vloggers as they go about their work:

The graphic is interactive and constantly updating. I'm not sure if you can read it, but vloggers ringed in orange have new blog posts that are live (since the last refresh), and vloggers ringed in red are streaming live video from their state at that moment.

My thoughts on the technology: The interface is a little clunky. It's hard to navigate between blog posts and videos, and even harder to get back to the map on the main page without hitting the back button a number of times. The reporters themselves are of wildly varying skills. Some seem to be having trouble with the live streaming, others seem to be at one with their camera. Some of them are clearly bloggers more than videographers and vice versa.

My thoughts on the content: On the whole, after clicking around for about a half hour, the real value thus far seems to be in the aggregate. No individual piece is really jumping out at me as spectacular, but watching 10 different videos (some streaming live) from as many different states, perusing different blog posts, etc, creates a very broad and diverse view of youth participation in today's election.

This is not a bad thing, or a criticism. It's going to take a while for all of these reporters to develop a style and an audience, and while I'm not blown away by any individual reporting just yet, the whole is very definitely better than the sum of its parts. That in itself is something of an accomplishment so early in the game.

What do you think, out in the states? Are the MTV vloggers doing a good job covering your local political scene?

• The Nation notes the negative impact that complex voter registration laws have on youth turnout.
• The Wall Street Journal makes sense of the race for delegates in the Democratic nominating contest.
• Threat Level, the Wired politics blog, has a great piece in which Sarah Stirland interviews participants in the MTV/MySpace Super Dialogue about how online organizing is changing politics.
• NetSquared interviews Ben Rigby of Mobile Voter about his new book, analyzing best practices in online advocacy. Definitely worth a read.

Today is Super Tuesday, but it is also Fat Tuesday, the peak of Mardi Gras. Fully cognizant of the fact that these should not at all conflict, the folks at Living Liberally, Young Voter PAC, Forward Montana, New Era Colorado, Democrats Work, and Traction are throwing election watching parties all over the country tonight.

From the Super Fat Tuesday website:

Super Fat Tuesday. Because election day should be celebrated. Because people want to experience politics together. Because New Orleans needs to be remembered. Because these campaigns have been so excessive, they are super fat...

So far there are over 27 parties scheduled in 19 states.

As for myself, this morning I schlepped over to the Municipal building in Downtown Brooklyn and cast my ballot for Sen. Obama. Tonight I'll probably stop by the Drinking Liberally party at the Tank in lower Manhattan before heading home to cover the results late into the night. Maybe I'll see some of you there.

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.

The Washington Post is reporting that Barack Obama is the first candidate to purchase national TV ad time in the Super (Fat) Tuesday contests. So far, Obama has purchased air time on CNN and MSNBC.

This is a new phase in the Democratic nominating process, and one that most of us are not used to seeing. The campaigns - at least Clinton and Obama - are now in a position where they need to run a national contest between now and February 5th. The crazy thing is that because of online fundraising and the growth of small-dollar donors, they actually have the cash to do this well.

For Obama, this has to mean one of two things - and most likely both. First, he's got to cede control and totally decentralize his field operation. He can't focus all his resources on one place and the candidate can't be in every state holding events and making his case. His supporters - online and offline - are going to have to be the standard bearers of his message.

Second, he's going to need to take the advice of the New Politics Institute and use cable TV ad-buys to target young voters. In Iowa and New Hampshire, the Obama campaign focused a lot of attention on young voters. They did hundreds of rallies, shook thousands of hands. The candidate was a real presence in those states. And the youth vote turned out in big numbers for Obama, even driving him to victory in Iowa with a massive turnout that was equal to 22% of the total electorate.

In Nevada, the candidate was much less of a presence until the final week. There were other mitigating factors as well, but this was in part one of the reasons for low youth turnout (compared to the rest of the electorate) in Nevada. That in turn was a primary reason why Obama lost the popular vote in the state.

If he's going to win on February 5th, Obama will need to find a way to reach out and speak to those voters; to make his presence known and impress upon them the importance of voting in their local primary/caucus. Cable buys can be a cheap and efficient way to do that by targeting young people who watch prime-time and late-night shows on Comedy Central, Cartoon's Network's Adult Swim, and MTV's reality series (yeah, trust me, a lot of 20 somethings still tune in).

Buying cable isn't as sexy as grassroots, decentralized organizing facilitated by the web. Nor is it a replacement for those activities. But it is one other weapon in the campaign arsenal that can help the candidate reach out and speak directly to younger voters at a time when the retail politics that helped him win in Iowa are just not possible.