Youth vote key to Obama's N.C. win

As Naureen Khan reported in today's Chronicle, Barack Obama won North Carolina's 15 electoral votes by the slimmest of margins.  

Before the election, The Chronicle's Chrissy DiNicola wrote about the likely effects of the youth vote on the presidential race.  Now, as reporters analyze the polling data, it has become clear that the youth vote proved decisive in several swing states this election. 

Andy Kroll, a Youth Vote correspondent for The Washington Post/CBS, reports in the YouthVote blog that in North Carolina and several other swing states, the votes of 18-29 year olds flipped those states from red to blue: 

According to CNN exit polls, young white voters, 54 percent of whom backed Democrat Barack Obama, comprised 11 percent of all voters. Young blacks, 95 percent of them voting for Obama, made up 3 percent of the electorate. And young Latinos, 76 percent of whom voted for Obama, were 3 percent of the electorate.

As it turned out, Obama's decisive majorities among young people were crucial to his win on Tuesday.

As The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini recently pointed out, "Had the Democratic 18-29 vote stayed the same as 2004's already impressive percentage, Obama would have won by about 2 points, and would not have won 73 electoral votes from Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, or Indiana."