Wall Street Journal Mangles Their Own Data. Again.

In the Wall Street Journal today, reporter Sarah Murray mangles the data from a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC/MySpace poll to produce an article that casts doubt on the engagement of young voters without any regard for recent trends in youth voting: New Voters Back Obama, Turnout Unsure. This is the second time in less than a month that she has done so in the pages of The Journal.

There are a number of problems with Murray's analysis. Most importantly, Murray over-represents the number of youth respondents in the poll, and then uses a deck stacked with older, "lapsed" voters to cast doubt on youth turnout next week.

Here's Murray over-representing young voter respondents in the poll data:

Three-quarters of those surveyed are young voters registering for the first time, and Sen. Obama has been working to mobilize such voters since his primary fight against Sen. Hillary Clinton.

This is demonstrably not true. Here is the demographic make-up of the poll by age:

Age Group	% Respondents
18-20	31
21-24	16
25-29	8
30-34	8
35-39	9
40-44	5
45-49	4
50-54	6
55-59	2
60-64	4
65-69	3
70-74	2
75 and over	2

Looking at this data, only 56 percent of the poll respondents are under 30 years of age, 19 points shy of "three quarters." In fact, the youngest "three quarters" of poll respondents would range in age from 18 to their low 40s. That may fly in the Republican Party, but common sense should tell you that a 40 year old is no longer a 'young voter' by any reasonable standard.

The implication throughout Murray's article, though, is that "Obama's youth supporters may not show up:"

There still are warning signs, however, that new voters -- traditionally difficult to get to the polls on Election Day -- could be unreliable. Just 66% of those voters said they would definitely vote this year, compared with 90% of registered voters overall. Additionally, only six in 10 said they were very interested in the election, compared with eight in 10 of the larger electorate. [...]

"The challenge now for the Obama campaign is not one of persuasion," said Mr. Newhouse, the Republican pollster. "The challenge to the Obama campaign is what we call stimulus; it's getting them out to vote."

Bottom line? This is the same "youth don't vote" story we've heard for years dressed up with "new voters" as a euphemism for "young voters." The data is stacked with information from hundreds of respondents that could in no way be considered young voters, and Murray's reporting does not take into account any recent youth vote trends in its reporting to provide context for their findings.

Here's what we know that didn't make it into Murray's story:

• We know that youth turnout rose in 2004, rose again in 2006, and was double, triple, and in some states quadruple previous turnout during the primaries.
• We know that Senator Obama and independent youth organizations have worked tirelessly to register new, young voters this cycle.
• Most importantly, we know that when young people are registered to vote, they turnout in numbers that are comparable to older registered voters. In 2004, 81.6% of all registered youth actually cast their ballot.

No one knows what youth turnout will look like until the polls are closed on election day, but all the trends are highly favorable. It's disappointing to see the Wall Street Journal continue to misread their own, uncontextualized data to cast doubts on the intentions of young voters.