A Correction To My Blog Post On Young Downscale Voters

By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

In looking at the 2008 exit poll today, I noticed a material error (since corrected) in this recent blog post. There I said that voters under-30 were 10 percent of the electorate; the actual percentage in the 2008 exit poll was 18 percent. I must have been looking at the percentage of those 19-24, which was 10 percent. There's still a difference between the 18 percent of the electorate that was under-30 and the 22 percent of the over-18 population which is under-30. And there's no significant difference between the under-30's share of the electorate in the 2008 exit poll (18 percent) and the 2004 exit poll (17 percent). Which means, I think, that the point I was trying to make--that young downscale whites didn't vote at high levels--is still true. But the numbers I mistakenly used overstated the point substantially. Sorry.

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By Michael Barone