CNN says the youth vote is at the same levels as 2008, constituting 18 percent of the total vote. Obviously, that would favor Obama.
Early signs are more encouraging than not but mixed. The exit polls are mostly favorable, but they've been bullshit the past couple of elections, especially the first wave, so I'm not going to publish them or put much stock in them. You can find them if you want them.
As for the rest of the night, I'll be doing some live blogging tonight, although at an admittedly saturnine pace compared to others such as Brother Sullivan. Within 30 or 40 minutes of a winner being declared, I'll have something hopefully informative and coherent up.
Tomorrow morning I'm already committed to writing a Newsweek feature fast off the results for next week's mag, and I'm taping a video mid-morning, but I'll throw up a couple of posts as time permits.
Final thought for now: Racial and ethnic turnout. If Romney does pull the upset, it'll be because the white vote was higher than 74 percent. Anecdotal reports are of high turnout everywhere, but I've seen that movie, we all have. We'll just have to wait for numbers. But a white vote higher than 74 percent would mean that lots more white conservatives came out to vote than were expected, and that's why the polls were all wrong.
On the other hand, minority share of the vote has never decreased in recent years from one election to the next. So there's no historical reason to think they aren't voting in large numbers. But this is about the only straight line that can seemingly be drawn in this election, from plus or minus 74 percent to Obama or Romney winning.
