Louisiana Youth Vote (Late Night Numbers and Observations) - Updated

Update: CNN has updated their exit polls. The final results say that Obama carried the youth vote by a more comfortable 66 - 30 percent margin, and he actually swept both cohorts of Millennial voters: 59 - 39 percent among 18 - 24 year olds, and 74 - 22 percent among 25 - 29 year olds. So Louisiana actually kept with the trends and is not an aberration like Massachusetts. Obama also won black youth by a more resounding 81 - 19 percent. No data is available for how young white voters cast their ballot.

In regards to turnout, if my math is correct, 35,754 18 - 19 year olds participated yesterday. The turnout rate is 4.7%. That may be the lowest youth turnout rate so far this cycle. Again, I'll update this once CIRCLE releases their data should my figures prove inaccurate.

My math was wrong. I calculated Democratic turnout against the entire eligible youth electorate. That produced an artificially low number because it left out Republican youth (who are, of course, counted in the total youth population).

CIRCLE has released their final analysis (pdf). The overall youth turnout rate was 7% (51,365 total young voters - including Republicans).

Among Democrats, youth share of the electorate increased from 7% in 2004 to 10% this weekend. Among Republicans, young voter share actually decreased from 2000 levels, going from 12% to 10%.

Once again, Democratic youth turnout more than doubled Republican turnout: 35,755 to 15,610.

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I'm just sitting down to look at the results of today's primary and caucuses. Obama is the Democratic winner in all three states today. When it comes to the youth vote, it looks like there are no exit/entrance polls from either Washington or Nebraska, meaning that it won't be possible (for me at least) to determine what happened in any quantifiable way.

Louisiana, does have exit polling, and here's what it looks like.

Note that these are subject to change as CNN updates their polling. I'll double check all the numbers tomorrow morning:

Young voters were 10% of the electorate, and broke for Obama 60 - 39 percent overall. There is no data on the youth vote share of the electorate for 2004, but young voters underperformed their share of the population, which is 24 percent.

Obama won both the older and younger Millennial cohorts - though barely. He and Sen. Clinton basically tied among 18 - 24 year olds, with Obama edging his rival out 50 - 49 percent. Among older Millennials, Obama won 71 - 29 percent. Obama's large victory among older Millennials is something we saw on Tuesday in Massachusetts, though it remains an aberration overall. In most of the contests thus far Obama does better among younger Millennials while Clinton finds the bulk of her youth support among the older cohort. I still don't have a good explanation as to why Louisiana and Massachusetts don't reflect this voting pattern.

Sen. Obama's carried younger voters due to strong turnout on the part of young black voters, who were 7% of the electorate and broke in his favor 74 - 26%. In this, young black voters overperformed for their share of the youth population, while young white voters underperformed. Young african americans are 34 percent of Louisiana's youth population, but they accounted for 70 percent of the youth vote. Young white are 61 percent of Louisiana's youth population, but they accounted for only 30 percent of today's youth vote.

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee once again proved himself to be the Republican youth candidate, pulling in 51 percent of the Republican youth vote to McCain's 30 percent.

There are still no numbers for the hard turnout or the turnout rate for young voters in either party. We'll have to wait for the final vote tallies tomorrow before that can be calculated. I imagine that CIRCLE will release fact sheets early tomorrow as well, and I'll post about them as soon as they are released.