Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Youth take-aways from Tuesday's vote

Courtesy of CIRCLE's tracking of 18-29 voters in the Super Tuesday states, we can glean two important realities for the youth vote for the GOP and into the general election.

1) Young people expanded their political support network - not exclusively flocking to Paul.
Combining the five Super Tuesday states in which exit polls were conducted with adequate youth samples, CIRCLE estimates that 88,000 total youth voted for Rep. Ron Paul, with about 88,000 who voted for former Sen. Rick Santorum, about 86,000 for former Gov. Mitt Romney, and about 43,000 for former Speaker Newt Gingrich.
2) President Obama continues to rivals the GOP in terms of the excitement he generated in 2008. As a candidate, Obama galvanized more than twice as many youth as the top three 2012 GOP candidates combined have.


This is why this year's youth vote is so crucial: Obama will exploit the Republican enthusiasm gap if he can reconnect with two-thirds of the 18-29 demographic.


Wesley, what are your thoughts?

Monday, March 5, 2012

Honestly, Tuesday's primaries won't be super important in 2012

I've long been a fan of Ron Paul's campaign strategy of embracing the delegate process and ignoring the beauty contest mentality of most presidential campaigns — even though it's left most mainstream pundits to declare his presidential efforts dead in the water.

We haven't been so hasty here at Scoop 2012. We've written and reported extensively on Paul's chances, the seeming success of his delegate strategy and the looming threat that he ditches the GOP in favor of a third party run.

I'm still convinced that a third party bid by Paul could be the most legitimate threat to the two-party system we've seen in hundreds of years (and I'm not complaining).

But lets not get too carried away with Paul right now — because I don't project him doing well in tomorrow's Super Tuesday primaries. He'll have solid support in many of the states — maybe even hitting 15 percent in states like Ohio and Massachusetts.

However, the three candidates with the most on the line tomorrow are clearly Romney, Santorum and Gingrich.

Absent from much of the national political dialogue since his free fall in the polls following his win in South Carolina. But he's sure to do well in his home state of Georgia — so if he can manufacture a handful of other strong performances he might gain national momentum.

Meanwhile, Santorum and Romney will be going head to head through the bulk of the Super Tuesday states.

The Washington Post did a great video break down of what is at stake tomorrow and how things might play out.



At the end of the day, as much as I love the hype and excitement that always surrounds Super Tuesday, this year's GOP primary is reminiscent of the Democratic primary in 2008 — a long, drawn out delegate battle.

Alexander: I trust you'll wait until after last night's results to let us know how young voters showed up and who they supported at the polls.