According to CIRCLE’s exclusive analysis, released today, Mitt Romney has caught up with Ron Paul in the total number of youth votes in the primaries and caucuses. Santorum and Gingrich lag far behind. Meanwhile, to put those trends in perspective, Barack Obama had drawn almost twice as many youth voters as Romney or Paul at this time in the 2008 cycle.

The relatively low youth turnout could be a sign that engagement is down, but I think it’s more likely that (to quote the CIRCLE release), “young people remain largely in the Democratic column today, after supporting Obama by a 68-32% margin in 2008 and then choosing Democratic House candidates over Republicans by a 57-40% margin in 2010.”