A Quick Review: How This Trainwreck Happened

Youth vote may have been key in Obama's win
(Wed., Nov . 5, 2008)

Early reports are indicating that the youngest members of the country's electorate voted Tuesday in higher numbers than in the last presidential election — and they voted more Democratic. Youth turnout appears to be exceeding 2004 levels, which was itself a year with a big surge in voters ages 18 to 29.

“We expected record turnout, and that is what we’re seeing right now,” says Heather Smith, a spokeswoman for Rock the Vote, an organization that works to encourage young people to register and vote in every election.

What’s more, young voters may prove to have been the key to Barack Obama's victory. Young voters preferred Obama over John McCain by 68 percent to 30 percent — the highest share of the youth vote obtained by any candidate since exit polls began reporting results by age in 1976, according to CIRCLE, a non-partisan organization that promotes research on the political engagement of Americans between ages 15 and 25.

“(The youth vote) is turning states that (Obama) would’ve lost or barely won into more comfortable margins,” says John Della Volpe, the director of polling for the Harvard University Institute of Politics. “Not only are they voting in higher numbers, they’re voting more Democrat.”

“Consistently throughout the country in key swing states, Obama is outperforming John Kerry’s performance (with young voters) from four years ago by two to three times the margin,” Della Volpe says, noting that on Tuesday night in Indiana, Obama was losing to McCain in every important demographic — except young voters. “In many states, the only significant electorate that Obama is winning is young people.”

“This is a group of people who are constantly checking in with everybody else in their circle to make a decision,” says Morley Winograd, the co-author of “Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics” and a former adviser to Vice President Al Gore. He defines Millennials as ages 18 to 26.

“This is a generation that doesn't tend to think about asking experts for opinion," Winograd says. "They tend to ask each other, and then that becomes the truth.”

Winograd says that means no decision is made without dozens of e-mails, texts or Facebook messages to check whether an idea works for the whole group — anything from “Where should we hang out tonight?” to “Who should we vote for?” — which could explain why Millennials so firmly latched onto Obama’s message of unity, he says.

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