I’d take issue, however, with the spin around youth vote and turnout.

Chris Cilliza of the Washington Post today writes about 5 myths coming out of the election. Turn out and the Youth is one:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/13/AR2008111303287.html

2. A wave of black voters and young people was the key to Obama’s victory.

Afraid not. Heading into Election Day, cable news, newspapers and blogs were dominated by excited chatter about record levels of enthusiasm for Obama among two critical groups: African Americans and young voters (aged 18-29). It made sense: Black voters were energized to cast a historic vote for the first African American nominee of either major party; young people — following a false start with former Vermont governor Howard Dean in 2004 — had bought into Obama in a major way during the primary season, and they finally seemed on the cusp of realizing their much-promised potential as a powerhouse voting bloc.

Or not. Exit polling suggests that there was no statistically significant increase in voting among either group. Black voters made up 11 percent of the electorate in 2004 and 13 percent in 2008, while young voters comprised 17 percent of all voters in 2004 and 18 percent four years later.

The surge in young and African American voters is not entirely the stuff of myth, however. Although their percentages as a portion of the electorate didn’t increase measurably, Obama did seven points better among black voters than Sen. John F. Kerry did in 2004 and scored a 13-point improvement over Kerry’s total among young voters.

Shaun Dakin
CEO
 StopPoliticalCalls.org

The Republican coalition, with the exception of conservative libertarians, is dominated by top-down people who put great value on hierarchy and authority — corporate, religious, military. GOP organizations and fund-raising reflect this top-down worldview and, from the 1970s until this election, they worked splendidly well.

The secret of Republican fund-raising dominance since the late 1970s was mastery of both bundling among the wealthy and direct mail among the less-than-wealthy. William Vigurie set the tone for GOP direct mail, whose messages were breathtakingly fear-based and manipulative. The Democrats were never able to match GOP direct mail success, giving the Republicans a huge advantage. Direct mail is entirely a top-down art, rooted in a 20th century worldview and its no-interactivity technology.

The Democrats’ new model uses 21st century interactive technology to add a bottom-up component to fund-raising, and it crushed the GOP’s 20th century approach. It clearly works at least as well with a hope-based message as direct mail works with a fear-based message. Because of tiny response rates and huge printing and postage costs, direct mail is wildly inefficient; the Web is wildly efficient. This is not a fair fight.

The Republicans will learn from Obama and get better at the Web. But their top-down worldview confines them, in John’s fine vocabulary, to classical. Jazz is not top down, it is democratic and interactive, beyond the narrow range of most top-down people. The party that is comfortable deploying both forms will dominate the party of one form. So I think what we’ve just seen is a lasting political sea change.

Gergen is a bit hesitant, but he’s dealing primarily with voter data. I think he’d be more confident after looking at data about the percentage of VOLUNTEERS who were younger. If we were to compile data about who knocked on doors, I think the disparity would be sufficient to call this is a new order.

When I was up in NH,the Obama office in Concord was so busy with young volunteers that they had to rent out a civic center down the road. When we went there, the CIVIC CENTER was so busy that they had to send us twenty minutes up Route 93: “We just got two bus loads of students we weren’t expecting.” That wasn’t even in the last 48 hours of the campaign.