Young people, ages 18-29, represented 19 percent of the voters in Tuesday’s election, with President Obama winning the majority of those votes over Governor Romney by 60 percent to 36 percent, according to the early released National Exit Poll (NEP) conducted by Edison Research. This is one point higher than in 2008, when young voters represented 18 percent of voters in the presidential election, according to the NEP.
The 19 percent does not indicate how many young people voted or whether there was a rise in youth turnout. In 2004, the youth share of the vote remained constant even though youth turnout rose. Young people represent about 21 percent of the voting-eligible population, according to CIRCLE’s analysis of Census data. The youth share (percentage of voters who are young) has stayed steady since 1996 as more people of every age have voted. Youth turnout, on the other hand, has grown consistently, with half of all 18-29 year olds voting in the 2008 election.

Young voters preferred Obama over Romney by 60 percent to 36 percent in the National Exit Polls. That represented a somewhat narrower margin than in the 2008 election, in which Obama took 66 percent of young voters. Before 2008, in elections from 1976 through 2004, young voters diverged by an average of only about 2 percentage points from the popular vote as a whole.