If youth vote, Obama wins

Peter Levine, the director of CIRCLE, noted in his blog yesterday the Gallup poll that was released at the end of July showing Obama losing ground to McCain, even among youth. Levine correctly points out that Gallup's sample size of likely young voters was 10% when, in 2004, youth formed between 16% and 18% of the electorate. As Levine reminds us, young voters are usually always undersampled in "likely voter" polling screens due to little or no previous voting experience.

(Table courtesy of NationalJournal.com)

But I thought Levine's main point was very instructive: if youth are sampled at their 2004 rate or one similar, McCain loses. If they are sampled at this rate, he wins.

More directly -- if youth turn out, Obama wins. If they don't, McCain does. It doesn't get much more elementary or inspiring than that.

Mark Blumenthal at National Journal has a nice write-up on this, too.