Young voters represented a greater share of the national electorate Tuesday than four years ago, once again voting for President Barack Obama by a huge margin, boosting his reelection.
Voters from ages 18 to 29 represented 19 percent of all those who voted on Tuesday, according to the early National Exit Poll conducted by Edison Research. That’s an increase of one percentage point from. Obama captured 60 percent youth vote, compared with Mitt Romney’s 36 percent.
Headlines suggested a lack of enthusiasm among college students in this election and polling showed fewer were registered or planning to vote.
“The role young people would play during this election has been a major question in American politics for over a year, and it seems the answer is that they have been as big a force at the polls in as in ,” said Peter Levine, director of the youth research organization CIRCLE at Tufts University. “They again supported President Obama, although not as lopsidedly as. Until tomorrow, it will be unclear whether youth turnout — or the turnout of any group — rose or fell, but young people were proportionately well represented in the electorate.”
Read the rest at Huffington Post.