Youth Vote Shifting in Iowa?

For months now, I've been reading Hillary vs. Barack as an equivalent of Dean vs. Kerry in 2004. Around this time in 2003, Dean's youth supporters (Deanie Babies, as we were called) were coming out in droves to support the governor. The things that Generation Dean accomplished in 2003, and the amount of people they were pulling into events was every bit as impressive as what Students for Barack Obama has achieved over the lat year. On the day of the caucus, however, it was all for naught. More young voters chose either John Kerry or John Edwards than they did Howard Dean.

Similarly, the Obama campaign has long had the edge among young voters in the media narrative, and even in the organizational displays his young supporters have organized. Yet Clinton has long held the lead among young voters in national and state-level polling. As we enter the final month before the Iowa Caucus, this may be changing.

Last week I mentioned a poll by Zogby that gave Obama a 40% advantage over Clinton nationally among young voters. I dismissed it as an outlier at the time, but now more new polling indicates that while a 40 point lead is still probably absurdly high, the tide may indeed be turning in favor of Obama.

Yesterday Rasmussen posted his latest Iowa Poll with the following results. Results from the previous poll, on October 17, in parens:

Clinton: 29% (40%)
Obama: 38% (23%)
Edwards: 17% (15%)

Additionally, a poll of over 2,000 students at Iowa State University gives Obama an even larger edge:

College students only make up a fraction of Iowan 18-29 who will caucus, and Obama has consistently done better among college students than among youth in general, so take the Iowa State poll with a grain of salt. And Iowa itself is notoriously hard to poll before the caucus. Still, it's hard not to see a pattern emerging. Perhaps polling is finally coming in line with the field operation that the Obama campaign has long touted it was building. Maybe young people are paying closer attention and changing their minds during a period that has seen Clinton's campaign declining in the media and in the polls. Rasmussen (where I get my non Rock the Vote polling) has yet to release an equivalent New Hampshire poll, so it's hard to say if this is still a blip, an isolated trend, or a national one. I suspect we won't really know for sure until we see the exit polling data on January 4th.