Turnout & The Youth Vote

Any analysis is complicated and tentative because the votes are still being counted, but we've already surpassed 2004's 122,267,553, with at least 133,275,000. Given the margins, this means more people voted for Barack Obama than for any candidate in the history of the country.

But even more encouraging, young voters went for Obama 66% to 32%, which is totally and completely unprecedented: Kerry only beat Bush by 9% among 18-29 year olds, and the average divergence between the youth vote and the rest of the populace between 1976 and today is only 1.8%. Furthermore, as Georgia10 puts it,

"Thanks to George W. Bush, who crystallized the effect of conservatism on this country, there's a whole generation of truly progressive voters out there. And thanks to Barack Obama, these young voters are energized and organized, and will remain so even though the election is over."

This was a victory on many levels.