The Dispatch wrote
Central Ohio awash in younger voters
Friday, October 3, 2008
By James Nash
Rule No. 1 of political debate, according to Ohio State University senior Eric Boyden: Never try it when you’re drunk. Nonetheless, the 20-year-old finance major from Lancaster said, the topic of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin came up at a recent party, and the room exploded into a major political argument. Central Ohio is filled with young voters like no other region of the state, and a big part of the reason is the presence of numerous colleges.
Three of those campuses — Ohio State (the nation’s largest), Ohio Wesleyan University and Mount Vernon Nazarene University — were abuzz with political energy during recent visits. But it’s unclear whether the fickle and unreliable youth vote will play a decisive role in this year’s election.
If it does, it likely will favor Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. During Ohio’s March primary, about 349,000 voters younger than 30 voted in the Democratic primary, compared with about 131,000 in the Republican primary.
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