Young Voter Trends: Can We Predict the Future?

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The youngest voters from 2004-2008

State       2004 Margin      2008 Margin            Swing

The Mid-Atlantic

PA            60-39 Kerry       66-34 Obama              D + 6
DE           54-45 Kerry        71-25 Obama        D + 17

Much is appreciated of your efforts. But you're looking strictly at how the Democratic candidates of 2004 [John Kerry] and 2008 [Barack Obama] performed.

What you're not doing is considering—and comparing—the margins in this group between the two major parties: Republican and Democratic.

They're even greater.

Yes, Obama had six more points in Pennsylvania than John Kerry. But get this: Kerry had 21 points over Bush with this group in 2004 Pa. Obama had 32 points over McCain with the same group in 2008 Pa. That's an 11-point Democratic swing.

In 2004 Delaware, Kerry won the group over Bush by 9 points. In 2008 Del., Obama won the group over McCain by 46 points. That's a 37-point Democratic swing.

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Current 14-18 year olds will only have known a Democratically controlled government (since they became aware of politics and such), so any mistakes made by Obama and the Democrats will hurt them significantly with the youth.

After Dubya, whom they will know and revile, they won't expect perfection from Obama. The youngest voters of 2012 will have been born in 1994; they will remember 9/11, which happened when they were almost seven at the youngest. They will remember the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.  They will remember the grandiose stunt of the President fling a naval aircraft onto an aircraft carrier to a banner reading "Mission Accomplished" only to find out later that the war continued in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course they will remember the subprime lending scam and real estate bubble coming to a bad end.  Many will have recognized as young as age 14 that Sarah Palin was a political disaster.

The "mission accomplished" event is probably not in these voters' memory.

They will also remember Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd, the huge deficits that they will have to pay off, as well as others.

If Obama fails on healthcare and/or raises taxes, they will become more cynical of politicians and trend to the right. Either of those is possible, though if they will actually occur remains to be seen.

Also remember, the youth who voted heavily for Reagan in '84, the youngest of which were 6 or 7 in 1972, lived through watergate. That hardly drove them away from the GOP.   

This is wishful, Republican Talking Points thinking.