Listening to the coverage one would have the sense that a key part of Obama's victory was a flood of new young people coming to the polls for the first time. Not so.
Percentage of the electorate in 2004 ages 18-29: 17%
Percentage in 2008: 18%
By contrast, the portion of the electorate comprised of evangelicals or Born Agains grew from 23% to 26%
So there was a much bigger surge of evangelicals voters than of young people.
Now what did change is that young people who do vote liked Obama (66%-32%) more than they liked Kerry (54%-45%).
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I worked the polls here in So. Cal this past Tuesday and saw a lot of young people come to vote. It surprised all of us working to see so many come in to vote for the first time and how excited they were. Since ballots are anonymous and there is no way to know the age, gender, color, religion, etc of any ballot marker, I think we have to remember that these numbers are all extrapolations from exit polls and not hard data.
Further proof that young people are just plain stupid. As if the popularity of "The Hills" wasn't enough.
And who do you think evangelicals and Born Agains voted for?
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