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Democracy Corps: Youth for the Win!
May 6, 2008 |
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Democracy Corp has issued a new poll of young voters: Youth for the Win (pd). The polls, conducted over landline, cellphone, and via the internet, treads a lot of old ground and I won't rehash it all here, but I do want to pull out a few interesting bits that put hard numbers to current memes about youth engagement and mark out distinctions that have thus far been overlooked.
First, some new stats on increased participation:
In early 2008 Democratic primaries, young people increased their participation by an astonishing 88 percent. Republican involvement also improved, though far less dramatically (by 7 percent).This is great news for the Democrats. As the following graph illustrates, this lopsided increase in participation translates into a huge partisan advantage at the ballot box. The Democrats now have an advantage among young voters not seen in years, and potentially not since 1992:
Michael Connery is the author of Youth to Power: How Today's Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow's Progressive Majority. He blogs about progressive youth organizing at Future Majority and is an adviser to a number of progressive youth organizations.
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