Myth-Busting Mark Penn

Clinton pollster Mark Penn is playing the expectations game. Today he released a memo to "interested parties" explaining what the Super Tuesday results mean.

I found this statement particularly ballsy:

b) Hillary can win the youth vote. Hillary swept the youth vote in California and Massachusetts, two states that can be a bellwether for how young people will vote in the general election.

Nice try, but exit polling shows Clinton winning the youth vote 51 - 47 percent in California, and 49 - 48 percent in Massachusetts. Neither of those qualifies as a sweep. A more accurate description would be "Hillary scraped out a win."

In California, this seems to be due to the fact that the number of young Latinos equaled the number of young whites as a share of the electorate (both at 6%). Clinton outperformed Obama among young Latinos to a slightly greater degree than he outperformed her among young whites. So that might account for most of her win among California youth.

Massachusetts is more of an aberration. It's true that when you break out the youth vote into older/younger cohorts, differences emerge. Hillary did quite well in Massachusetts among 18 - 24 year olds, who were 7% of the electorate, and Obama got more support among 25 - 29 year olds, who were 6% of the electorate. Their percentages among these two groups were practically mirror images of each other, and both could equally lay claim to "sweeping" their demographic.

The most surprising thing about Massachusetts is that it reversed the normal partisanship patterns among the two youth demographics. Normally Clinton wins the older Millennials (when she wins youth at all) and Obama the younger. Honestly, I have no explanation for this and I'd love to hear any theories others have. This could be to what Penn is referring in his memo, but he's playing so fast and loose with his terminology that he deserves to be called out on this. Especially since he's a pollster who should be sensitive and responsible about the way he describes these demographics.

At the end of the (very long) day, Clinton and Obama basically tied among the youth vote in Californian and Massachusetts. And in almost every other state it is Sen. Obama who has the legitimate claim to "sweeping" the youth vote. The only state in which Clinton can legitimately claim to have swept the youth vote is Arkansas, where she won 61 - 37 percent. Penn makes no mention of that because he knows, as her home state, the win is meaningless in terms of shifting the media narrative around his candidate. It doesn't spin, so it gets left out.

So, no, Mark Penn. Clinton did not sweep the youth vote.