This morning, I noticed something interesting regarding the results of the D-Kos straw poll that I created on this web site. It turns out the One Million Strong for Barack group on facebook decided to stuff the ballot on my poll overnight.
Last evening, John Edwards had a considerable 20% lead on Obama (including leaners), which gave him a 47% to 27% advantage in this specific poll. This morning I logged onto the One Million Strong for Barack group and on their front-page was a link to the poll I made intending to see how kossacks favor the current democratic presidential field.
As of right now, with 489 votes Obama enjoys a 35% to 29% lead over Obama and when you include leaners Obama holds a 40% to 37% slim advantage. The shifting of the poll results overnight made me wonder if the college demographic will have a similar impact in the presidential primaries or if they will vote at a staggeringly low rate as they historically do every election cycle.
In my estimation right now John Edwards currently holds a 15%-18% point advantage over Barack Obama among Kossacks. In addition, it wouldn't be surprising to myself if Edwards surpassed the 45% mark in the official April straw poll and even crushed Barack by near or more than 20% points.
The Official March Kos straw poll gave Edwards a 38% to 26% advantage over Obama, which was a double-digit increase from the previous month's poll. As a result, I strongly believe Obama's popularity is slightly fading among the most reliable demographic of democratic primary voters, which are liberal kossacks.
I'm only 23 so I definitely qualify to be in the college-crowd demographic, but more importantly I know first hand that a overwhelming majority of my peers close to my age have never voted before in a primary election, or even intend on doing so unless they are given immense notice to vote before the primary date. This is usually the result of being uninterested, disenfranchised from American politics, or just pure laziness on the individual's part.
The question now becomes will the college-crowd demographic actually come out to vote in the early primary states. In my mind, there is no doubt the kossacks will have a major influence on how the results of the early primary states turnout next Janurary.