| Harvard's Institute of Politics recently conducted a survey of youth voters aged 18-24 that confirmed some of the things we've been speculating about here on One Million Strong. I'll defer to Mike Connery's great analysis on Future Majority, which should be required reading for all of you, but I just wanted to let you know about a couple of the most important points. First, the poll shows a tight race for the 18-24 year old vote:  However, at the time this poll was conducted, national polls were showing a twenty point lead for Clinton. So there was a thirty point gap between preferences in national polls and among young people.
But here's where it gets really interesting. The internals of the poll show that Obama has a two-to-one lead among college students, while Clinton seems to lead among young people not in college. Also, Clinton also has a one-point lead among young women, and is crushed among African-Americans --- putting to rest two of the convetional wisdom theories about the strenth of her youth support: - Obama leads Clinton, 44%-23%, on college campuses, but Clinton leads Obama, 38%-31% among those who never attended college;
- Obama leads Clinton, 37%-28%, among Whites, 62%-25% among African Americans, but trails 54%-20% among Hispanics;
- Obama leads Clinton, 40%-28%, among men; Clinton leads Obama by only one, 37%-36% among women;
- Obama leads Clinton, 51%-26% in the Midwest and 42%-29% in the East, but Obama trails Clinton by 9 in the South and by 6 in the West.
Intriguing is also Clinton's lead among hispanic youth. Where does this come from? Obama has also yet to catch on in California and the West, perhaps in part because of Clinton's lead among Hispanic voters --- although it's hard to guess which is causing which. Even more interesting, the survey found significant differences in candidate preference between owners of landlines and owners of cellphones: By a statistically significant margin, Hillary Clinton does better among young voters with landline telephone access (leads by 5) than she does with voters who do not have landlines (trails by 13) and maintain only cell or VOIP service (a significant and growing segment of the electorate).
In other words, traditional telephone surveys of the public might be understating Obama's support among young people. The poll also showed growing optimism about the effectiveness of political activism. All in all, good stuff. Go take a look. |
