Rock the Vote Releases Post-Super Tuesday Youth Poll

Earlier today Rock the vote released the first comprehensive polling of young voters since Super Tuesday. There's nothing hugely shocking about the results if you have been following the youth vote, but the results are certainly worth noting as they provide further confirmation to what we've been saying here at Future Majority for a while.

You can view their power point, or thumb through the toplines and crosstabs for yourself, on their website (pdf). The poll was via landline and cellphone with 668 18 - 29 year olds. Latinos and African Americans were oversampled. The margin of error is +/- 4.4%

On the Issues

Overall, 68 percent of young voters believe that the country is on the wrong track. The economy and health care are two of the top concerns of young voters, and the two issues are intertwined:

When asked about specific issues of concern, the jobs and the economy ranked as the top issue, mentioned by 17 percent of respondents as the issue they would most like the next President to address. Following in second was Iraq (12%) and third was health care (11%). Most encouragingly, on Iraq, 69% of respondents either want to pull some or all troops out and 68 percent of respondents thought that providing health care for all Americans was the responsibility of the federal government.

When pressed for further details about their economic concerns, 20 percent of respondents expressed concern about the lack of jobs available on which one could support a family. The second highest economic concern was rising health care costs, cited by 16 percent of respondents.

Of least concern to young voters are some bread and butter conservative issues - the decline in the stock market, taxes, and moral values (3% each).

On Civic/Electoral Engagement

No surprises at all here. Young voters continue to show a high level of civic engagement and spirit:

• 80 percent of respondents are paying attention to the Presidential election.
• 88 percent of respondents agree that young people have the power to change this country
• 75 percent of respondents agree that they personally have the power to change the country.
• 78 percent of respondents agree that this year their vote will count.
• 75 percent of respondents agree that young people are making more of a difference than usual this year.

I find that last bullet encouraging. For over a year I've had the terms "youth vote" and "young voters" on my Google Alerts. As bad as the media coverage of increasing youth turnout has been since 2004, young voters - particularly college newspapers - have been at least equally culpable in spreading the idea that Millennials are apathetic.

On the Parties and Candidates

As I've written many times, the Democrat's party advantage - on generic ballots and in party ID - has been increasing for years now. Rock the Vote's poll confirms this.

On Party ID, the Democrats have a 19 point lead over Republicans.

Democrat: 43%
Republican: 28%
Independent: 16%

On the generic Congressional ballot, Democrats hold a 52 - 27 percent lead over Republicans, and the Congress generally maintains a 46/31 Fav/Unfav rating among young voters.

Among the candidates, Barack Obama is by the far the most favored candidate in the race - Republican or Democrat, and there is a measurable "excitement gap" between the parties support for the top tier candidates:

Both Democratic candidates defeated Sen. McCain in head to head matchups.

Perhaps the most interesting finding as it relates to the election pertains to why young people are so engaged this cycle. A full 69 percent, when presented with a number of options - including support for a particular candidate - chose they "feel this election is going to be important" (40%) or "they want change" (29%). Only 8 percent chose "they are excited about a particular candidate" as their primary reason for paying attention this election cycle.

While one can argue that "they want change" is code for Sen. Obama, this stands in stark contrast to the Obama cult of personality meme that spread throughout the media in the last week, and supports what I've written many times on this blog and in my book. Young voters have been participating in increasing numbers for years. The Obama campaign has tapped and amplified a movement that was already coalescing, but it did not create the movement and isn't necessarily the prime mover. If it wasn't Obama, it would have been someone else this year, to a greater or lesser degree.

There's a lot more comparative data on the candidates - particularly matchups between McCain and each of the Dems. I won't go into all of those, suffice to say that Obama and Clinton tend to beat McCain on a range of indicators. Obama usually beats McCain by greater margins than Clinton. There are a few exceptions: Clinton and McCain are roughly tied when asked about trustworthiness and "strength," and McCain beats Obama in the "experience" category.

Also of note is a huge gender gap between the parties in youth support. Democrats generally lead among young women by 35 points. They lead by only 7 points among young men. Interestingly, a reverse gender gap plays a significant role in explaining the larger advantage that Sen. Obama has over Sen. McCain. While both Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton lead McCain among young women, Sen. Clinton loses to McCain among young men in all categories. Sen. Obama, on the other hand, leads Sen. McCain among all young men except evangelicals and young married men.

There's a lot of data to wade through and so far I've only looked at the toplines and the Power Point. I may have more later after wading through the cross tabs.