In an article written a day before the Iowa caucuses, I predicted the youth vote would be the difference for Barack Obama in Iowa.
Most pundits and experts either scoffed at the notion or considered it a high risk strategy to count on for actual turnout. Old, experienced caucusgoers were the ones that consistently showed up, they said, and that favored the establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton.
As noted by Michael Connery at the Daily Kos, even the Obama campaign referred to the youth vote as "icing on the cake."
"Turns out it was the cake," he writes.
The youth vote nearly tripled from 2004. 46,000 young people showed up to caucus, making up 22% of the total vote. This, in spite of the fact that many students weren't even back in school yet from the holiday break.
According to CNN, an overwhelming 57% of these young voters came to support Obama compared to just 11% for Hillary Clinton and 14% for John Edwards.
Now that the concrete evidence has come in, the media is finally starting to realize this movement is for real. The old cliches must be discarded, the conventional wisdom replaced. The youth vote, as we've seen now over the past three elections, is growing steadily. The total democratic turnout doubled, swelling to nearly 250,000, and the youth vote must now be considered a legit and substantial bloc of the party that is its beneficiary. This means the issues young people care about---the war in Iraq, the environment, and education, among others---must be addressed.
Barack Obama has clearly hit a chord. His victory speech last night is already being compared to the great speeches of JFK, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. The energy and excitement in that room was palpable and could be felt in living rooms across the country. It brought many to tears.
For many young people, it was one of few times in our lives that we have listened to a politician and felt truly proud to be Americans.