I know I’m in danger of beating a dead horse here, but I have to make one more point about youth turnout. John Kerry would have lost the popular vote even if every single citizen between the ages of 18 and 29 had voted–a completely unreasonable expectation. Assume that all 40.7 million under-30s had participated, and they had voted in the same proportions that actual young voters did last week: i.e., 54% for Kerry vs. 44% for Bush. Then John Kerry would have received a boost of 1,927,000 votes, net. (There would have been roughly 10.4 million more votes for Kerry, but also approximately 8.47 million more for Bush.) In reality, the Democratic ticket lost the popular vote by 3,510,358. Therefore, even with 100% turnout among the 18-29s, Kerry would have lost the election by 1.58 million votes.

Moral: youth turnout wasn’t the problem for Democrats. They lost because Americans preferred the Republican ticket in ’04.