The Obama campaign understands polling

The Obama camp's David Plouffe and Dan Pfieffer:

We tried to get Plouffe to react to a spate of national polls showing a tightening race.

"All we care about is these 18 states," he said. He repeated, with emphasis, that the campaign does not care about national polling. Instead, the campaign's own identification, registration and canvassing efforts provide the data he uses to determine where to invest money and resources.

Plouffe also emphasized that the internal polling the campaign does is focused on those same 18 states, and that their real concern is not the horse race results but the "data underneath." Later, he added, "the top-line [polling data] doesn't tell you anything." Rather, they focus on who the "true undecideds" are, "how they are going to break," and what messages will best persuade them.

The Gallup Daily tracking poll is apparently a particular sore point. When asked whether they were unhappy that the Biden announcement had not produced a bounce in national polls, Plouffe shot back: "How would we know . . . from the Gallup Daily?" The Gallup Daily is "something we don't pay attention to," he said again.

Communications director Dan Pfieffer later put it more bluntly, expressing unhappiness with the "inordinate focus on bad polling" by the media and also in the routine misinterpretation of sampling noise in the Gallup Daily poll. "The Gallup Daily is the worst thing that's happened in journalism in 20 years," he said.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES. YES. I feel so good about this campaign right now. Everything Plouffe and Pfieffer said is true, and it's stuff that professionals in politics and journalism very rarely understand. This is the best news I have heard in a long time.

...(Personal note: I promise I'll start writing long posts again soon. Two things have to happen first: the Convention has to end, and then I have to sleep for like a week.)

(Also: did you see Schweitzer's speech? If not, you should fix that immediately.)

Re(2): Dear Markus

I wish I knew where to find all those cool graphs. Then I might actually stand a chance in these arguments ;)

I think my concerns are best classified as "frustrations" rather than "panic," and upon further reflection I think they lie mostly in my third point.

I don't want Obama to win just by exciting and registering more liberal voters. Don't get me wrong: I think it's amazing that this election is breaking records and the Obama campaign is working so hard to register more people and get them involved; it's a great step forward for this country, and I'm proud to have joined them in registering voters this summer.

But it would be an even bigger step forward if that excitement came coupled with an overwhelming mandate from the center of the electorate for Obama and the Democrats. Maybe I'm too idealistic, but in my mind the Obama campaign in the primaries billed itself as capable of building a broad coalition across the political spectrum, and from the recent numbers I just don't see that happening.

Without that coalition, this movement is just a one-time thing. Republican Senators up for re-election in 2010 and beyond are not going to be scared into voting for health care or alternative energy if they know that the Democrats' win in 2008 came merely from the insurgence of marginal voters who were only inspired by one man and who are not likely to vote again.

We need to be convincing the center of the electorate that, on the major issues (the economy and health care especially) the Democrats are better. Certainly given the way the campaign has gone so far, we should be well on our way to doing that. My disappointment with the state of the race lies in the fact that as yet, we have not.

Maybe it's too early, and all of this will settle itself in the fall. But the only way to make true progress is to move the center of the country left, and I'll judge Obama's overall success on his ability to accomplish that.

Re: Dear Markus

Whee! This is fun. Brian, here is why your concerns are misplaced:

See that tiny little uptick in the red line there? That's the thing that has everybody horrified. Meanwhile, Obama has since about April been consistently pulling 45-47% or so, which considering unallocated undecideds and a race with THREE prominent third-party candidates is clearly a winning percentage. Damn but Democrats scare easy.

To your specific points:

1. John McCain is a terrible candidate who is running a terrible campaign... Barack Obama, on the other hand, is the most exciting candidate the Democrats have ever had. So WHY IS HE ONLY WINNING BY TWO POINTS?!

   Excitement about a candidate, and the quality of the campaign, will manifest itself almost entirely in election-day turnout and polls from the days immediately beforehand, as marginal base voters decide whether or not to bother voting. You can't measure that in August. Meanwhile, Obama's lead -- which has ranged in the past few months from about 2 to 7 -- reflects the structural advantages he has in this electorate very well. (I repeat: John McCain is not, in fact, winning.)

2. I disagree that people aren’t paying attention. This election is different from every other before it, and I think people are watching.

   Be careful with your assumptions here. Yes, this election is different; but in order to know that, you have to have been paying attention already, and you have to be familiar with previous elections. That leaves out the huge and decisive portion of the American public that only follows politics with a passing interest, and which never pays attention before the conventions and Labor Day. It's quite likely that the politically-engaged population (like us, and all of our friends) is more excited and paying more attention than usual, but that doesn't matter, because we vote consistently. It's the disengaged, low-information marginal voters that matter.

   But even if they’re not paying too much attention, every household in every swing state is currently getting bombarded with McCain’s attack ads. And while the ads may be completely freaking ridiculous, the problem is that they’re not being countered by the Obama campaign, and impressions are formed early and are hard to change.

   Yes, there are a bunch of attack ads airing, but their main purpose right now isn't to reach marginal voters (who, I reiterate, don't give a damn this early) nearly as much as it is to define the media narrative which, in traditional campaigning, shapes the actual gameplay in September and October. Now, Obama's campaign is hardly traditional, and it's going to rely on a whole different voter universe (see: their startling voter registration efforts) than the one which is traditionally swayed by media, so I'm not too concerned about that.

3. I also reject the argument that the race is all about the electoral votes and the popular vote doesn’t matter.

   I didn't say that. My point was that national polls aren't very indicative because they can't reflect Obama's weird impacts on turnout. Certainly a rising presidential tide lifts all downticket boats, and I expect that to happen much more dramatically than the polls can possibly represent.

...The thing to remember is that not only does Obama have a consistent lead, recent Chicken-Little-ism notwithstanding, but we can reasonably expect him to overperform that lead substantially on November 4. Feel better?

Dear Markus,

I respectfully disagree with your take on the latest polls.

The recent numbers showing Obama with narrow leads, or even statistically even (I know, it’s Rasmussen so it doesn’t really count) are so frustrating to me that I can’t help but feel fairly pessimistic about the way things are going. Three reasons:

1. John McCain is a terrible candidate who is running a terrible campaign. He has made gaffe after gaffe after gaffe (I’m not even bothering to find links for each gaffe because they’re so well-chronicled on this and every other blog in existence), he is uninteresting, he is getting zero media coverage, and everyone hates Republicans right now.

   Barack Obama, on the other hand, is the most exciting candidate the Democrats have ever had. So WHY IS HE ONLY WINNING BY TWO POINTS?! If Obama cannot beat McCain under the current conditions, or even if he wins by a slim margin, I cannot imagine another situation in the foreseeable future in which a Democrat would actually win the Presidency.

2. I disagree that people aren’t paying attention. This election is different from every other before it, and I think people are watching.

   But even if they’re not paying too much attention, every household in every swing state is currently getting bombarded with McCain’s attack ads. And while the ads may be completely freaking ridiculous, the problem is that they’re not being countered by the Obama campaign, and impressions are formed early and are hard to change.

   Obama is afraid to get his feet wet after claiming a "new style of politics." He’s been running his campaign too conservatively, and he has to start firing back early and often. It doesn’t need to be mudslinging. But the fact that this video isn’t seared into the mind of every American and "mental recession" isn’t a household phrase is appalling, considering that this election is gearing up to be all about the economy.

And while he’s at it, he can show McCain’s ads to be the old kind of politics by producing a negative yet substantive ad.

3. I also reject the argument that the race is all about the electoral votes and the popular vote doesn’t matter. Obama’s weak (given the political atmosphere and the events of the race so far) numbers are disappointing from a down-ticket race stand point. Standing on the assumption that a majority of people will vote straight down one of the party lines, Obama needs to start doing better with the working-class white people and the moderately-conservative independents who will be the key to a 6- or 7-seat gain in the Senate and a 30-seat gain in the House (both of which should be attainable given the political climate).

Politico: Obama is winning, therefore, Obama is losing

See this right here? This is why I don't bother reading Politico.

In the two months since Barack Obama captured the Democratic nomination, he has hit a ceiling in public opinion polling, proving unable to make significant gains with any segment of the national electorate.

While Obama still leads in most matchups with John McCain, the Illinois senator’s apparent stall in the polls is a sobering reminder to Democrats intoxicated with his campaign’s promises to expand the electoral map beyond the boundaries that have constrained other recent party nominees.

GAAAAHHHHHH. Three things.

1. Only in DC journalism does it make sense to write an article claiming that, because Barack Obama has a narrow but significant lead, Barack Obama is clearly in trouble. This is like a sportswriter saying that the Bruins are obviously screwed because they keep winning games by just two goals.

2. It's not surprising that the polls haven't moved this summer -- it's the summer. Nobody pays attention to politics in the summer, except high-information voters (basically all of whom have already made up their minds). What would be strange is if the polls were moving. Gallup's Frank Newport seems to agree, in this delightfully loopy (and obviously truncated) quote from the article:
   

   “What’s remarkable this summer is the stability of this race,” Gallup’s director Frank Newport said. “In a broad sense, it is similar to previous elections.”

   (Sidenote: why do reporters always quote pollsters to make them sound like Zen masters? Take this, also from the article: "ABC News Polling Director Gary Langer asked, “If everything is so good for Barack Obama, why isn’t everything so good for Barack Obama?”" I really don't think that sentence means anything at all.)

3. Obama's promise to "expand the electoral map" would naturally expand it beyond pollsters' likely-voter screens, so we really can't ascertain whether that strategy is working by looking at national polls. We won't know that until election day.

It really saddens me that people spend their time reading this bullshit. WHEN will the elite media learn the basics of polling? WHEN?

Basics

While I'm writing about polling today--

Far be it from me to discourage Democratic overconfidence, but Immanuel Wallerstein is way over-the-top in predicting a superawesome Obama landslide this fall. He's made some pretty basic methodological errors. (This wouldn't normally attract my attention except that James Wolcott, one of my blogging heroes, seems to have swallowed it.)

Wallerstein writes:

Let no one underestimate it. Barack Obama has won big. He has not only won the Democratic nomination for president. He is going to sweep the elections with a large majority of the Electoral College...

I have just done an analysis comparing McCain's state by state strength in the latest polls and Bush's proportion of the actual votes in 2004. In 45 of the 50 states, McCain is weaker, often much weaker, than Bush was. And in the other five, he is about the same. Of course, if Bush had won a state by a large margin, McCain will still win it albeit by a smaller one. But in the states that were close in 2004, the tide is in Obama's favor.

Ok... uh... see... "analysis..." the, uh... DUDE THERE ARE UNDECIDEDS IN THESE POLLS. Of course McCain is underperforming 2004 vote counts; it's freaking June. Like 15-20% of the electorate is still undecided. I'm sure that Obama is drastically underperforming from Kerry 04 right now; does that mean his campaign is doomed too?

In fact the current polls show that Obama could easily lose if he slips in the Upper Midwest (if Michigan goes to McCain, which for some inexplicable reason is a possibility, it's game over). Visit DemConWatch and play with their excellent General Election Tracker to give yourself some idea. Wallerstein's whole thing here is a complete fiction.

Oh, and that's the one and only piece of "evidence" Wallerstein has. The rest of his argument reads like this:

Furthermore, we have to realize that McCain is currently at the top of his strength. The Democratic Party is now reunifying and hungry for winning. Obama will lose almost none of the traditional Democratic percentages among women and Jews. He will increase the national percentage among Latinos and will bring in a very large number of young people and African-Americans who otherwise would not have voted. He will also get the votes of the considerable number of independents and Republicans disillusioned with Bush. The people who will vote against Obama because he is African-American were almost all already going to vote Republican. This issue is behind him, not in front of him. (...etc)

Yeah, well, I can confidently state in my commentary that Barack Obama craps gold bricks, but that doesn't make it true. Until I see evidence for these contentions -- some of which are quite controversial (there aren't going to be racist defections? really?) -- this whole thing is meaningless.

I'm annoyed here because Immanuel Wallerstein is a towering intellect, and this is beneath him. There are way too many examples of smart people writing confidently and at length based on completely false assumptions from bad polling analysis. And consequently, often conventional wisdom is formed without a shred of real evidence behind it. This stuff is not hard -- make an effort, guys...

A quick object lesson in poll analysis

Red flag #1 ought to have been that this was in the Washington Times, a paper that's not exactly known for its journalistic rigor. But no, I soldiered on, reading a fairly bland writeup about a Harris poll that shows -- Surprise! -- not everybody reads political blogs. Whatever. Until this:

The Harris poll, meanwhile, found that political blog readership was lowest among those younger than 40 — and highest among people 63 and older.

Buh? Since when are seniors the biggest readers of political blogs? I mean, I know I do my best to court that demographic, but I'm fairly sure I'm in the minority there. One does not imagine Grampa gettin' up in the morning and checking out, for example, TBogg, especially not more frequently than the average young person. So -- all you amateur statisticians out there, can you think of a reason this finding might be flawed? How about we read the next sentence?

The online Harris survey of 2,302 adults was conducted Jan. 15-22.

Aha! The only people who could respond to this survey -- in polling terminology, its "sample frame" -- were people who were already using the Internet. Now, we can assume that it's a fairly small and non-representative portion of seniors who are online regularly, whereas a larger and more diverse (though still non-representative) portion of younger people use the Internet. (See Gallup, among many other sources.) So you cannot generalize from these findings out to the population at large, only to Internet users, and hence saying that blog readership is "higher" among one group or another is simply wrong. In fact, it's likely that in raw numbers, more young and middle-aged people read political blogs than older people, simply because there's more of them online. This is very very simple stuff, and it's sad that no editor at the Washington Times (assuming they have editors) caught it.

(This is also why Internet polls -- like the Harris and Zogby Interactive -- are completely worthless for political purposes. The Internet just cannot provide a representative sample. Or at least not yet; if current trends continue, Internet use may be as standard as phone use within a decade or so, at which point it'll be kosher for polling.)

...Still, maybe I'm wrong, and the chief demographic of a political blog really is the over-65 set. In which case, what the hell, give 'em what they want has always been my motto...

----SHAMELESS CROSS-PROMOTION ALERT: Grab the Indy today (or, if you're over 65, read it online) for a bunch of insightful pieces on the 5th anniversary of Iraq, including a brilliant analysis of media's role in war and public discourse by our own Sam Jack.

Is the Democratic coalition really growing "younger, more affluent, more liberal..."?

(No Sunday Screening tonight; if you really need a fix, here is a satire of Greg Mankiw's economics, here is an emergency broadcast system tornado alert from North Carolina in 2004, and here are a dog and a monkey doing sit-ups. That ought to cover my bases, right?)

Ron Brownstein made the cover of Friday's National Journal with an analysis that argues the Democratic electorate is changing. It's a pretty good piece, and I imagine it'll make the usual rounds (Ross Douthat, often an early adopter, has already linked it with enthusiasm). Except there's a severe methodological problem with Brownstein's analysis that renders it basically moot. Here's the argument:

From New Hampshire to California, and from Arizona to Wisconsin, exit polls from this year's contests show the Democratic coalition evolving in clear and consistent ways since the 2004 primaries that nominated John Kerry. The party is growing younger, more affluent, more liberal, and more heavily tilted toward women, Latinos, and African-Americans.

In the 18 states for which exit polls are available from both 2004 and 2008, the share of the Democratic vote cast by young people has risen, often by substantial margins. Voters earning at least $100,000 annually have also increased their representation in every state for which comparisons are available -- again, usually by big margins. Women's share of the vote has grown in 17 of the 18 states (although generally by smaller increments). In 12 of the states, Latinos have cast a larger percentage of votes, as have the voters who consider themselves liberals. African-Americans have boosted their share in 11 of the 18 states... etc.

OK. Brownstein's analysis is based on comparing the electorates of 2004 and 2008; that's completely apples and oranges. 2004 was basically decided after Dean got stomped in Iowa, save John Edwards' late challenge in February -- whereas 2008 is still competitive, and was a pure toss-up until recently. The environments, particularly the turnout levels, are not even remotely similar!

Brownstein seems to think he's accounted for this problem by using relative shares of the vote (rather than absolute numbers). He writes:

The shifts in the Democratic coalition are particularly striking because they are occurring at the same time that party turnout has increased over 2004 in every state that has voted so far. These groups, in other words, are contributing a larger share of a growing pool. Latinos, for instance, increased their share of the Democratic vote in California from 16 percent in 2004 to 30 percent this year, even amid an overall surge in turnout. ... "The context for these shifts is not just a different distribution but a much larger pie, which makes it more impressive," says Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster unaffiliated in the race.

But this is predicated on the assumption that, in a generic scenario, increased turnout would affect all demographic groups equally. Think for a minute and you'll realize what a silly assumption that is. Some demographics are more likely than others to vote consistently, regardless of the political climate; plus low-information voters (who are more prevalent in particular demographic groups) are likely to turn out in sporadic patterns that have little to do with the political climate or anything else. (I have no idea, BTW, what Geoff Garin is talking about in that quote. It sounds like someone got confused during the interview.)

What are some such groups that don't increase turnout so reliably? Seniors are the most obvious example (they tend to vote with near-perfect regularity); also blue-collar and union workers (who are often turned out to vote by political machines); moderate/"independent" voters, who are usually low-information; and the bottom ends of the education & income scales, which are also heavily low-information. Funny, those are the exact groups that Brownstein claims are losing influence in the party!

Thus the "change in composition" Brownstein's talking about is more illusory than real -- I don't know about the increased share of minority votes, which doesn't track with this model (we can speculate that the identity politics prominent in this race might have to do with it), but the other changes he's pointing out are not functions of realignment. They're functions of turnout inconsistency. And all the implications Brownstein draws from them are consequently hollow.

So when, inevitably, you hear people repeating this canard--

In the Democrats' longtime upscale-downscale divide, these changes are tilting the party away from blue-collar and often gray-haired "beer track" voters toward younger and more affluent "wine track" voters

--remember that, no matter how intuitive it may seem, the evidence does not bear it out and the Democratic Party is not necessarily changing into anything at all.

(Amazingly, this is not the first time I've rapped Ron Brownstein for bad poll analysis -- here's me a year and a half ago accusing him of overvaluing rural voters in the VA and TN senate races, and I believe I was proved at least half right there. He's a gifted and insightful writer, but it seems he really shouldn't be handling polls...)

What's Happening in Iowa?

The other day I wrote about the state of the Democratic race in New Hampshire; well, let's go through the looking-glass now, because I want to quickly analyze the condition of Republicans in Iowa. There are a number of breathless headlines today about Mike Huckabee's big surge in the CBS/NYT poll; how real is it? Well--

--no, that is not a lost Jackson Pollock, that is the story of IA-GOP 2008 thus far (from the invaluable Pollster.com). And it suggests that Huckabee's rise is quite real; he has been gaining consistently since the beginning of the year, and we can see him really start to take off shortly after midyear (which coincides with his breakthrough at the Ames Straw Poll in August). This CBS/NYT poll is not much of an outlier, either; we can see other numbers (Strategic Vision, ARG, even Rasmussen last month) putting Huckabee up in roughly that same neighborhood. The only reason there's so much press on this one is that it happens also to have Romney uncharacteristically low, giving the appearance of a competitive race.

The consistency of this rise is striking, in fact; Huckabee must be right in the pollsters' wheelhouse in order to get such smooth numbers (which makes sense; he targets religious and older conservatives, who are much more apt to answer their phones consistently and probably have an easier time getting through the complex IA caucus likely-voter screens). Romney, meanwhile, is all over the place; I think this is because his support is soft, which would certainly explain the fluctuating numbers between organizations (they push undecideds differently and use different screens, which would lead to different results for a candidate with shaky support). The CBS data bears this out -- from their uncharacteristically good analysis:

While Romney still has the lead in Iowa, his support base is softer than that of Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor whose campaign has gained momentum in recent weeks. Half of Huckabee supporters said they had made up their mind, compared to two-thirds of Romney supporters who said they could change their mind before caucus night.

We can see in this graph how Romney's rise came entirely at the expense of Giuliani and McCain, so I'm guessing a number of current Romney supporters are there solely because they jumped the Rudy/McCain ships and Mitt was the only recognizable alternative. If Huckabee continues to gain steam, watch for him to pull in a LOT of Romney's supporters, very quickly.

The other figure to remember is undecideds; CBS has 57%, which is even higher than the NH-Dem number that bowled me over on Sunday (48%). In this case, though, the trends are much more pronounced (as opposed to the Dem race which has been basically in stasis for months), so I'm a little more confident that they'll continue as more people in tune in.

Which means you should brace yourselves for a strong Huckabee showing, perhaps a victory, on January 3rd; which would make him a media juggernaut and a potentially serious threat very quickly. The consequences of which, I and
others have argued, could be dire...

Roundup -- So Very Alone

Campus is eerie this evening; deserted, less than a day into spring break. Walked through Leverett and Mather Courtyards without a soul in sight. I thought maybe the world had ended and I'd missed it. (Typical; I'm late for everything these days.) But no, HARVARD LIVES, if only on the Internets; so here's yet another Roundup for you. Since those of us who aren't going to Cancun need something to do, after all.

To begin with, check out this graph to the right -- it's from the huge Pew poll released this week, which contains a gold mine of interesting data. The most heartening one for us is, as indicated to the right, Democrats have a bigger advantage over Republicans in generic support than we've seen in decades; dig further into the numbers and you see slow but certain gains for the liberal position in every single category, from gay rights to military interventionism. The country is moving our way.

--On the Harvard blogfront: Hooray for the return of Immigration Orange! Also, glad to hear Ryan's recovered -- I was very worried after reading he'd shoved a contact lens behind his eye. (Eww.) And once again I'll plug Planet 02138, which is mind-bogglingly useful. (Speaking of which, can we get a blogroll update sometime soon? Anyone? Bueller?)

--I'm sure everyone heard Elizabeth Edwards' sad news, and I don't think there's any need to rehash the subject. However, it's troubling that so many people seem to think that this calls for Edwards' withdrawal from the race, to the point of suggesting he's callously ignoring her needs out of ambition; most of these concerns are genuine. Nevertheless they're invalid. Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher, battling breast cancer herself, has the best description of them: "condescending bullshit".

--Depending whose poll you check, Iraqis are either completely hopeless or trembling with hopeful joy. It's science!

--Well-established among progressives, I think, is the idea that "you can't win a 'war on terror'". War on an abstract concept is impossible from the get-go. But this Wonkette satire brought to mind an interesting corollary: you can't really lose a war on terror, either...

--John McCain owns a ferret, three parakeets, and over a dozen fish. For his part, Sam Brownback has a dachshund and a fish named "Marvin Three". Meanwhile all we can counter with is Bill Richardson's cat Squeaky and maybe Barack Obama's as-yet-hypothetical dog. One thing I'll say for the Republicans, they have us beat when it comes to awesome pets.

--Speaking of Sam Brownback, I gave him guff in a thread last month for his amateurish web design; if I recall, I compared it to a white-supremacist site from 1996. Well, the Senator's updated his website and has a sweet new logo:
Now, why does this font and color scheme seem so familiar... oh yes:

Zing! Mike Huckabee, you just got very very subtly served!

--Quote of the week is from Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, with a message for the types who are constantly pushing for "unity," and opposing "rancor" and "division":

“If you take a principled point of view and people fall down on one side or the other, you can either be characterized as being principled or being tough,” he said. “Or you can be dismissed as being divisive, and I think if that’s the definition of divisive, we need more people in politics who are divisive.”

Hear hear. (h/t Hit & Run; and I die a little inside every time I approvingly cite libertarians, but what can you do.)

--Tom DeLay has not read his own book. Why doesn't this suprise me at all? (Here's the video, btw.)

--WHY do pundits insist on calling Jim Webb a "centrist"? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HE'S A SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONARY. Jim Webb is in my wing of the Democratic Party, with Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders and most of Minnesota and the smiling ghost of Eugene Debs. Just because Webb's macho and Southern and straightforward doesn't automatically make him "centrist", you pricks.

...I'll leave you with a thought, found via Band Madness (a fascinating March Madness-style voting competition between every major band of all time. Music fans owe it to themselves to check this one out). Seems commercial hip-hop can sometimes lead to deep existential quandaries, and it falls to the Village Voice to sort them out:

Mims is hot because he's fly. But it raises the question: Does being hot guarantee one's being fly? You ain't 'cause you not" would seem to clear that up: it would appear that fly and hot are interchangable. If you are one, you are both; if you aren't at least one, you are neither.

Deep, man. (...What is the sound of one hand rapping?)

This is an open thread, but only for the fly and/or hot. Happy Spring Break, everybody.

Turnout Among 18-24 Year Olds Could Break Records, IOP Survey Released

The IOP has just released the results of its Fall 2006 Young Voter Survey.

For the first, time we polled college students AND non-college 18-24 year olds.

LINK: http://www.iop.harvard.edu/

HIGHLIGHTS

• Midterm election turnout among 18-24 year old could reach record levels in 2006.

• A strong majority of likely young voters favor Democratic control of Congress.

• A near-majority of young people favor total troop withdrawal from Iraq within the next year.

• 18-24 year olds trust the military and the United Nations more than Congress and the federal government.

• President George W. Bush gets “C-” grade on seven key issues.

• President Bush’s handling of Iraq, clearly the issue that is driving this election and the President’s second-term agenda, is viewed by more than two-in-five (43%) young Americans (and 67% of young African Americans) as a
  failure or “F."

Obviously, this is big. Youth voter turnout for midterm elections is usually very low. High turnout next week would represent both an individual record-breaking event as well as reveal a trend of increased youth involvement in politics.

Also, as the poll clearly shows that young people are strongly siding with the Dems, high youth turnout could confound the pollsters who always weight their polls based on expected demographic participation.

Check out the rest of the poll results. It's a treasure-trove of interesting data. For one, I can't get over how much young Americans HATE the media.