Listening to the coverage one would have the sense that a key part of Obama’s victory was a flood of new young people coming to the polls for the first time. Not so.
Percentage of the electorate in 2004 ages 18-29: 17%
Percentage in 2008: 18%
By contrast, the portion of the electorate comprised of evangelicals or Born Agains grew from 23% to 26%
So there was a much bigger surge of evangelicals voters than of young people.
Now what did change is that young people who do vote liked Obama (66%-32%) more than they liked Kerry (54%-45%).