Eighteen to twenty-nine-year-old turnout did not live up to all the pre-election hype. According to CNN exit polls, the proportion of voters under 30 increased by about 1 percent nationally--from 17 percent of the electorate in 2004 to 18 percent this year. Yet even if their share of the electorate was relatively flat, their propensity to choose Barack Obama was not. The Democratic share from this subgroup surged in 2008.
Barack Obama's 34-point (66 percent-32 percent) victory among 18-29-year-olds was the largest winning margin in that age group since Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater in 1964. By way of comparison, George W. Bush lost the under-30 vote by 9 points to John Kerry (54 percent-45 percent) four years ago.
Even though younger voters are hard to turnout and often inattentive to politics, they provided a huge number of votes to Barack Obama. Not surprisingly, Democrats are already working hard to maintain their edge with this cohort. This recent Los Angles Times piece discusses some of the efforts already under way. Reporter Laura Olson writes:
The Obama transition team already has moved to capitalize on this enormous youth base: Web-casting the president-elect's weekly addresses on YouTube; communicating its transition steps on a post-election website, Change.gov; and reaching out by e-mail to many of the campaign's 3 million donors amassed during a nearly two-year campaign.
The team also has taken advantage of booming social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, in reaching out to younger voters in their own element.
Republicans may not win this age group in the foreseeable future. But a Republican won't step foot in the White House again if the party continues to lose this roughly 20 percent of the electorate by more than a 2-1 margin. Closing that gap--at least to low double digits--should be a top priority of the Republican Party hierarchy now that the election dust has settled.
