One Day, if You're Bored, By All Means Call

Good news from the Wall Street Journal today:

A strong performance in the first of three presidential debates appears to have helped Sen. John Kerry among likely voters in 16 battleground states, according to the latest Zogby Interactive poll. Mr. Kerry now holds leads, albeit some of them razor-thin, in 13 states, an improvement from the 11 he held three weeks ago.

I’ve read in various places (as examples, see here, here, and especially here—because Jimmy Breslin rules) about how the voting trends of younger (18-25 year old) voters may be largely unaccounted for in most of the major polls, as a larger segment of that population relies exclusively on a cell phone, forgoing a landline, the traditional means by which pollsters reach voters, altogether. (Aside: Mr. Shakes and I sent our landline the way of the dodo ourselves, and despite being a bit out of the 18-25 range, many of our contemporaries have also opted to go landline-free.) The possibility that a dearth of mobile-only youngsters may skew traditional polling is a theory to which I believe John Zogby himself subscribes, hence his penchant for online polling.

Typically, polling indicates that younger voters skew predominantly toward Kerry. If they’re being left out of most of the traditional polls, and if they do tend to skew left, then the number of 18-to-25ers that shows up on election day could swing this thing big time.

As anecdotal evidence of the chance that this dream may very well come true, check out Jonathan Alford’s Looking for votes, finding America, today’s cover story on Salon. A nice story generally worth a read, but the following particularly caught my attention:

…Pat says that he has spent more time registering students and 18- to 25-year-olds than any other group. He's been averaging 1,000 a week.

Rock on, Pat.