Youth Voted.

There are a lot of reports out there dismissing the youth vote, and stating flatly that youth didn't show up. They can't be furtheer from the truth. Lisa Chamberlain reports in Salon that the facts and numbers tell a different story.

Truth is, we long-time progressives (along with the blissfully ignorant American moderate block) let these young people down. We didn't show up, or we went home because the line was too long, or we let Uncle Dick's stories of the Bogeyman scare us into voting for the village idiot.

John Kerry got 5 million more votes than Al Gore did in 2000. That's a 10% increase in total Democratic vote. Hey, pretty good, right? Think again. The Scourge Of The Texas Rangers got a 9 million vote jump—18%! Now, doing some calculations based on how many more 18-29 year-olds voted, and that they shifted from 50-50 in 2000 to almost 60% Kerry in 2004, and we find that the youngest demographic block (18-24) boosted the Democratic vote by about 1.6 million votes cast, roughly a third of the Democratic vote increase. 18-29 Democratic votes increased by a total of over 3 million from 2000. Certainly they did their part.

That still leaves two million new Democratic votes from the 30+ crowd, over what Gore got, right? Sure, sure, but note that that is an increase of under 5%. Overall U. S. population growth can account for that.

So one of two things happened: either the Republicans turned out tons more folks than they did in 2000, or they got a bunch of Gore voters to go Bush in '04 (the third case, rampant voter fraud, has no incontrovertible evidence at this time).

Either way, shame on us.