mike huckabee

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.

---------------------------------
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.

Last night, four Presidential candidates participated in the final MTV/MySpace Candidate Dialogue. Dubbed "Closing Arguments," the event, which ran almost two hours, was a final chance for the candidates to make their arguments to young voters, who have played an influential role in the nominating process thus far.

The event was not very interesting in what it told us about the candidates - most viewers in the live audience had already decided which candidate would receive their ballot, and the candidates themselves said nothing new. Last night's event was interesting in that it revealed a new battleground for online organizing that will surely come into play during the general election.

When I arrived at the event at MTV studios in Times Square, a rally in support of Sen. Obama was already in progress. The Obama camp placed attendance somewhere around 300. Supporters were also there for Hillary and Ron Paul, though their numbers were much more modest. This wasn't all that unexpected. Obama has the most youth support by far, and he's been able to organize his supporters quite effectively on the ground.

The surprises came during the online polling when Ron Paul took his turn (all online polling results below):

I've long noted that the candidate dialogues were the most interactive events on the campaign trail, and I've been excited about the possibility that MTV and MySpace could create a feedback loop between the candidates and the online audience that would keep the candidates more honest in their answers and cut down on speculation among the punditry by providing a real-time glimpse into what young voters were thinking about the campaigns.

This didn't happen in previous Dialogues, where young voters overwhelmingly agreed with the answers provided by Senators Obama, Edwards, and McCain. My hope was that this feedback loop would emerge during last night's Q&A with one of the Republican candidates, who generally have views that contrast greatly with those of young voters.

Instead of that feedback loop, what I saw was a tactical assault by Ron Paul supporters to "win" the debate for their candidate. In question after question, Ron Paul scored much higher than I would have expected, and the Democratic candidates scored far lower than I thought possible.

For example, Darfur has long been a high priority with young voters, who are also multilateralists, and questions about the genocide have come up in almost all of the previous dialogues. When asked a question about Darfur, Dr. Paul laid out a non-interventionist plan for handling the crisis in which he equated direct involvement in solving the Darfur crisis to our intervention in Iraq. I expected Paul's answer to invoke a backlash in the online voting. Instead, he garnered a startling 61 percent support.

This level of support continued. 76 percent supported his views on how the country should have responded to 9/11. 78 percent supported his views on energy independence. 81 percent supported his foreign policy ideas, and fully half declared their intention to vote for Rep. Paul on Tuesday. To be sure, Ron Paul has some youth support, but this was above and beyond any support he's received thus far. Even in the Republican contests Huckabee, Romney and McCain have repeatedly done better among young conservative voters than Ron Paul.

These results were startling, but perhaps not unexpected. Ron Paul's support has mostly manifested itself on the internet, where he dominates social news websites like Digg and Reddit. This tech savvy was on display once again last night, and the Paulites were not content to limit their activity to boosting their candidate. They also worked to drag down his opponents.

This was confirmed when the Democrats - Obama and Clinton - had their turn. Sen. Obama scored just above or below 50 percent support on almost every question asked of him. This was far different from his first appearance on MTV, when he typically scored upwards of 75% support. Chris Cilliza of the Washington Post, the moderator in charge of the online component of the debate tried to explain Obama's low-marks as a manifestation of young voters desire for "experience" over the Senator's message of "change," but polling for Clinton not ten minutes later put the lie to that analysis. Sen. Clinton rarely scored higher than 25 or 30 percent support, despite the fact that younger people are participating in the Democratic primaries in far greater numbers than the GOP contests.

Last night, Obama's supporters showed their strength outside the venue with as they rallied for their candidate, but Ron Paul's supporters were the real winners last night. Yet again they were the first to break new ground in another online venue. Unlike the other campaigns, Paul's supporters figured out that the interactivity of the MySpace/MTV dialogues was a two way street; it could keep candidates accountable, but it could also be used by supporters to influence the kinds of questions their candidate received and how his performance was reported. Pauls supporters made last night's event another battleground for their online campaign, and gave their long-shot candidate another feather in his cap (even if they probably didn't improve his chances of winning the nomination).

This has implications beyond Super Tuesday. Due to the success of these events, MTV and MySpace will likely engage the eventually nominees for both parties next fall. Whoever those nominees are, if they are smart, they will learn last night's lesson and organizer their supporters accordingly.

MTV is about to announce that on Saturday, February 2nd, Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee will both participate in the ongoing MTV/MySpace Candidate Dialogues. Billed as a "Super-Dialogue," the event will offer any candidate polling with at least 10% support to address the MTV/MySpace audience, however only Clinton and Huckabe have accepted thus far.

Regular readers know that I think these dialogues are the most impressive use of the social web this cycle in creating real interaction between the public and the candidates. MTV's use of live-polling, unscripted questions, and on-line audience feedback represent the most dynamic public forum on the campaign trail. They are to the much-touted CNN/YouTube debates what CNN/YouTube is to traditional broadcast debates.

Originally, MTV and MySpace planned to air forums with all the candidates on the trail before the Iowa Caucus. That didn't work as planned, and only John McCain, John Edwards, and Barack Obama participated before the Hawkeye state cast their votes. Now, with February 5th - Super (Fat) Tuesday - approaching, Clinton and Huckabee will get their chance to address the nation's young voters.

Clinton is looking to eat away at Obama's base, as she did in New Hampshire. If she can capture enough of the youth vote, she could cripple Obama in the race for delegates. Huckabee, who won the youth vote in evangelical-heavy Iowa and South Carolina, is looking to do much the same: keep up his lead among young evangelicals, and prevent McCain or Romney from gaining ground among youth.

The program will air:

• Broadcast live on MTV, MTV2 and MTV Tr3ìs, with highlights on college network mtvU
• Streamed live online via MySpace (www.myspace.com/election2008) and MTV’s www.ChooseOrLose.com
• Distributed live to the Associated Press Online Video Network, encompassing more than 1,800 media sites with an aggregate reach of 61 million unique visitors – and nearly 600 local media outlets in Super Tuesday states
• Streamed live on mobile devices via MTV Mobile
• Broadcast live on radio via XM Satellite Radio, MTV and AP Radio
• Translated into Spanish and broadcast on ImpreMedia’s LaVibra (www.lavibra.com/candidatos)
• Live studio audience participating at MTV’s Times Square studio

The event will be here in NYC, so I'll be live-blogging from the studio audience.