Amongst users of Facebook, who are generally young and internet savvy, Barack Obama leads John McCain 73-12.
Facebook has an "app" which will automatically change your "status" to get out the vote for their favorite candidate. (I'm not a big fan of Facebook's shenanigans which is why I put most everything from their site in quotes). Users can choose from amongst Barack Obama, John McCain or "just get out the vote."
So far, with 159574 users (now that I am done composing, it's over 163k) signed up, the results are
73% Barack Obama
12% John McCain
9% Just get out the vote
I figured Obama would be ahead amongst this demographic, and that it might be a 2-1 advantage (mirroring national polls of under-30s). But I would have never guessed 6-1.
There might be some interesting stuff going on here. First of all, reverse-Bradley is possible. A lot of the "just get out the vote" people just don't want to admit they are McCain fans, but don't want their left-leaning friends to — uh — never speak to them again (as I would likely do if a "friend" of mine went for McCain). Perhaps some McCain supporters might be for Obama to save face. Still, that shouldn't shift it so high.
The other interesting thing is that whilst anyone can join Facebook, many of its users are under age 18. This is actually very good news: in the next few election cycles, the new folks coming in look to be quite progressive. No one ever polls under-18s (at least not scientifically, Drudge was all up about a national online poll of kids a while back), although perhaps they should. Whenever we see these data on ages, it never seems to go below 18 (perhaps because it is generally exit polling). So while we can guess at how new voters will be coming in to the system, we don't really know.
See the DemFromCT's diary from a couple days back for more charts and information.
In 2004, 20-year-olds broke for Kerry (I was one of them) but then preferences dropped precipitously so that by age 26 Dem support was only in the low-40s, which continued until the baby boomers above age 45 supported Kerry more. In 2008 there is a similar drop, but it has moved ahead by several years. The 20-year-olds in 2004 have not gotten any less liberal, but more so, and even slightly older voters are backing Obama by huge margins. From age 18-30 (14-26 in 2004) support for Obama is over 60%, and it only drops between age 34 and 50 and again after about 62.
The second break there might tell us something. The 50-62 demographic has aged four years from the 45-57 demographic which saw more support for Kerry in 2004. The number of liberals in that demographic has gotten older, but not necessarily changed affiliations. If we assume that the current crop of 20-something stays with their current politics, it bodes very well for our side. It's quite possible that in four years 18- to 34-year olds will all be voting 60%-plus for the Democrats, which would mean very hard times for Republicans.
The big wild card is what will happen with the new voters in four years, current 14- to 18-year olds. If Facebook is our guide, they might come in more the 60% for the good guys. And that would not be a bad thing.