Young Voters Drove Overall Turnout Increase

Via an analysis in the New York Times, its apparent that this year's turnout increase was driven primarily by young voters:

The overall turnout rate, reflecting a percentage of voting age population, was 40.4 percent, compared with 39.7 percent in 2002, according to an Associated Press vote count and an analysis by American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate.

So overall turnout rate increased by less than 1%, yet the young voter turnout rate rose by 4% over 2002 levels.  So not only did the kids  turnout, and break democratic (as the graph below shows), but they also drove the overall turnout increase that we saw in the electorate as a whole.

Rock the Vote's Hans Reimer puts another spin on youth vote turnout in the piece by the Times, noting that the overall turnout number of young voters rose 25% over 2002 levels - from 8 million to at least 10 million (final number is still TBD.)

Also, Kos has anecdotal evidence of young voter turnout playing a large role in Wisconsin:

The controversial amendment easily passed Tuesday, with Wisconsin voters approving the ban by 59% to 41%.

But the measure clearly had an unintended consequence by sparking a larger-than-expected turnout, especially among left-leaning college students, who flooded their campus polling places.