Young people and 2010

It's pretty much a given that turnout from young people will be down in this year's midterm election. It's also pretty much a given that will hurt Democrats because they did so well with voters under 30 in 2008. But here's another layer to that problem- we're finding in our polling that the young people who do plan to turn out this year are much more Republican leaning than the ones who came out last time.

The last six Senate races we polled were in Arkansas, Alaska, Illinois, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Nevada. Across those six races the Democratic candidates are doing an average of 36 points worse on the margin than Barack Obama did with young people in their states in 2008. Now keep in mind that many of these samples of young people are pretty small and have high margins of error precisely because so few of them are planning to turn out this year but when you're talking about 35 points there's certainly something there.

Young Republican voters may be disengaged this year as well but for now it's not nearly to the same extent as young Democratic voters. Here's the data:

State	2008 Result	2010 Polling	Difference
Alaska	McCain +26	Murkowski +29	3
Arkansas	Tie	Boozman +29	29
Illinois	Obama +44	Giannoulias +3	41
Massachusetts	Obama +57	Coakley +11	46
Nevada	Obama +36	Lowden +10	46
North Carolina	Obama +48	Generic Dem +2	46