Youth Vote Impacts '08 Election

Politico's David Kuhn writes in a piece entitled, "Obama has historic youth mandate" that the President-elect's "34 point margin of victory with voters under 30 was the largest in a generation, [and] cut across lines of class, color and education." He calls it the "most impressive youth mandate in modern American history." Kunh notes that the youth made up 18% of the electorate (one point higher than 2004) and had 52%-53% turnout among registered voters (about four points higher than 2004). Click here for more analysis from CIRCLE. 

Patrick Ruffini, a renowned Republican online organizer, wrote in a recent blog post entitled the "The Straight-Ticket Youth Vote," that not only did young people favor Barack Obama 2:1, but they also voted for Democratic Congressional candidates in the same margin. The story, he says, is not how many new voters there are, but the staggering 25 point margin they swung in Democrats' favor by. 

The claim Ruffini makes that is most surprising, however, is that had young people voted in the same numbers and manner as they did in 2004, Obama would have won the election only  by 2 points, and more surprisingly, would have lost 73 electoral votes. While that would not have changed the outcome of the presidential race, it certainly would have made it substantially tighter. In congressional and state races throughout the country, it is almost a certainty the youth decided the outcome of some. Ruffini writes, "Obama has reshaped the electorate" partially through new voter registration but more-so by "gobbling up" most existing young voters. 

To me, these and many other articles seem to beg three large questions: if this "historic" election only brought 53% of young people out to the polls, what will it take to increase that number (which, in my opinion, is still embarrassingly low for a thriving democracy)? Is the 25 point margin favoring the Democrats in this election the result of the last eight years and present circumstances, or is it part of a larger political realignment? Perhaps most importantly in practical terms - now that most of America has recognized the enormous "mandate" Obama has from young people, how should he act on it? 

Feel free to sound off in the comments section.