Daily News Roundup, 1/4/08: The Kids Are All Right

After writing about any subject for awhile, I imagine you collect at least a small degree of cynicism if not a healthy heaping helping of it. If you cover car shows, you might get cynical about how the Edsel and the DeSoto never win any prizes. If you cover high school theater competitions, you might lament that schools performing Chekov never win. And if you cover politics, you are convinced that young voters and new voters are mythical creatures that don't exist, and as such cannot matter in an election. Last night in Iowa, young voters and new voters turned out, and Barack Obama benefited.

More or less everyone said that Obama's strategy wouldn't work, and they had good historical evidence. Even Obama's campaign officials (some of whom worked for Dean in 2004, in which the student vote and new voters were courted) discounted the idea, perhaps giving the impression that the youth vote thing was, at least for Obama, more about appearances. From Time Magazine:

Barack Obama will be happy to have all the student turnout he can get. But the prize is not the votes, but the brand. The image of the new and charismatic candidate is a powerful marketing tool for a would-be Democratic candidate. Campaign young — but organize gray: that's the real winning strategy.

So how then do we explain what happened last night? A look at the details shows that on a night of record Democratic turnout — almost double the turnout in 2004 — the youth vote actually showed up. Of caucus-goers in Iowa, 40% were under the age of 44, 22% of the total vote were aged 17-29, and get a load of this: 17% of the vote came from people aged 17-24. The younger demographic voted overwhelmingly for Obama, Edwards won the 45 - 64 crowd by 3 points, and Clinton won 65 and overs decisively.

As for the new caucus-goers showing, boy did they ever. In fact, a majority of caucus-goers were first-timers, and they broke 41% for Obama.

Among only Democrats, the results are much tighter than they were all in — 24% of the total vote were Republicans or Independents, and among Democrats only, the results were Obama 32 / Clinton 31 / Edwards 23. Obama won Republicans and Independents. The list of groups Obama won keeps going: Obama won women (35% to Clinton's 30%). Obama won single women. Obama won the very liberal, and the liberal, and the moderate.

On issue importance, the economy tied Iraq. I would love to see the crosstabs on that, though, because I can almost guarantee there's a generational divide, and among the young and first-time caucus-goers I bet Iraq was of primary importance. And probably prohibitively so. Maybe for the first time, an issue has presented itself which a change candidate can ride to youth vote success, or new voter success. New Hampshire has a history of producing winners different from Iowa, but they also have a history of rejecting presumptive candidates. They have a wily independent streak. They Live Free Or Die. I think last night's results invalidate previous polling (as Iowa is wont to do) and now you can look forward to what a punch-drunk looking Tim Russert called "the five most exciting days in politics ever" at about 6:30 AM this morning on MSNBC.

The other news from out of Iowa is Huckabee, and in a larger sense, McCain. Oh, and also Thompson and Paul. And probably Romney too. Surprise - Iowa didn't actually tell us much about the Republican race, setting up about a month of vicious backbiting and the political equivalent of guerilla warfare. McCain now gets to play the resurgent "You thought I was dead" candidate who is now more or less leading the national polls. He's creeping up on Giuliani even in national aggregates, and Giuliani's late state strategy is starting to look like a non-starter.

I'm pretty sure that Huckabee will get trounced in New Hampshire, but the nature of the race means that a win in South Carolina could even him out after that. Thompson slouched his way to what amounts to a tie with McCain, but I think it is McCain that will emerge from Iowa as the second story, under Huckabee's win.

To finish up today, a little bit of state news. First, the projections are now starting to roll around in the media that the 2008 elections will be a bad scene for Speaker Tom Craddick. With press like this, who needs a primary opponent?

Lstly, if you've been watching the Harris County District Attorney race with any sort of interest, you may be puzzled to find out that Chuck Rosenthal might get back in the race after withdrawing yesterday. He still has time, as the ballot isn't a done deal until 6:00 tonight. Let me be the first to encourage Mr. Rosenthal to get back in it to win it (no limit). I think the primary, with all of the issues at hand up for discussion, would be extremely entertaining.