PPP Survey: Ohio Youth - Where You At?

Most of you have probably already heard that the latest Public Policy Polling survey has Barack Obama with a double digit lead over McCain - 50 - 39%. The Party is unifying behind Obama, allowing him to overtake McCain in states where he previously trailed.

So how are youth factoring into that equation? I took a look at what crosstab data is available (pdf), and, according to PPP, it doesn't look like Ohio youth are giving Obama much help at all.

You may remember that in the Ohio Primary, Sen. Obama crushed Senator Clinton among Ohio youth - 61 - 35%. Considering that young voters in Ohio participated in the Democratic primary over the GOP primary at a rate of almost 3 - 1 (pdf), it would be expected that Obama would blow-out McCain among Ohio youth.

My only explanation is sample size. Young voters were 17% of the sample (n=773), or about 131 respondents. The margin of error for the youth numbers could be huge.

The flip side of this equation is that if the PPP survey royally screwed up it's youth sample, that would mean that Obama might hold an even greater lead in Ohio than the survey indicates . . . anyone more savvy with numbers than me have thoughts on this?

This is something to watch - and another reason why we need more reliable youth polling. A lot of youth organizations will be on the ground in Ohio. For a variety of reasons (cell phone/lack of landlines, small sample sizes, etc.) most polls fail to adequately survey younger voters. It would be nice to have solid data about what youth are thinking and how we can best talk to them about the election. Particularly in the major battleground states.