Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Young people and 2010

It's pretty much a given that turnout from young people will be down in this year's midterm election. It's also pretty much a given that will hurt Democrats because they did so well with voters under 30 in 2008. But here's another layer to that problem- we're finding in our polling that the young people who do plan to turn out this year are much more Republican leaning than the ones who came out last time.

The last six Senate races we polled were in Arkansas, Alaska, Illinois, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Nevada. Across those six races the Democratic candidates are doing an average of 36 points worse on the margin than Barack Obama did with young people in their states in 2008. Now keep in mind that many of these samples of young people are pretty small and have high margins of error precisely because so few of them are planning to turn out this year but when you're talking about 35 points there's certainly something there.

Young Republican voters may be disengaged this year as well but for now it's not nearly to the same extent as young Democratic voters. Here's the data:

State

2008 Result

2010 Polling

Difference

Alaska

McCain +26

Murkowski +29

3

Arkansas

Tie

Boozman +29

29

Illinois

Obama +44

Giannoulias +3

41

Massachusetts

Obama +57

Coakley +11

46

Nevada

Obama +36

Lowden +10

46

North Carolina

Obama +48

Generic Dem +2

46
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3 comments:

  1. gemimailFebruary 9, 2010 at 7:43 PM

    This group along with black voters are the reason why Obama got elected as I am sure you will agree. Without them heavily on board, the Democrats are in for a tough year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownFebruary 10, 2010 at 12:30 PM

    Democrats seemed to do fine in 2006 without heavy youth and AA turnout, so thats a crock.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Christian LibertyFebruary 11, 2010 at 12:28 PM

    Democrats did fine in 2006 by running as CONSERVATIVES. Rahm Emmanuel specifically recruited CONSERVATIVE Democrats who would run on Fiscally Conservative positions and Pro-Life positions.

    Since Democrats are governing against this winning mandate in 2009-2010, they are guaranteeing their defeat. Unless Democrats renounce Obama's progressive agenda and run as fast as they can to the right, they are guaranteed to lose the House.

    ReplyDelete