By Chris Cillizza and Shailagh Murray
Sunday, April 27, 2008; A08

Election after election, when all the obvious story lines are exhausted, the media tend to turn to an oldie but goody: "Will this be the race where young people finally start voting?" Youth vote advocates insist that young people are more dialed in than ever this year, while political hacks who have been in the business for decades roll their eyes at the notion.

Given that, The Fix recognizes the danger in making the following statement: The youth vote will matter in 2008. A look back over the last few months shows a massive increase in youth (people ages 18 through 29) voting; the number of young people voting quadrupled in Tennessee and tripled in states such as Iowa, Missouri and Texas, according to a new study by Harvard University's Institute of Politics.

The report goes on to say that the growth in young people's participation in the electoral process is not a "one-time phenomenon" but, rather, represents a "civic reawakening of a new generation."

That conclusion is affirmed by polling conducted by MTV and CBS News -- survey data that provide a detailed and nuanced analysis of the burgeoning 18-to-29 vote.

Some of the results from the polls will surprise no one.

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) leads Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) 48 percent to 37 in a Democratic primary matchup. In general-election trial heats, both Clinton and Obama best Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). Obama leads McCain 52 percent to 39 percent, while Clinton holds 51 percent to 41 percent.

While none of those hypothetical results turns conventional wisdom on its head (younger voters tend to favor Democrats, and Obama has spent considerable time in the campaign courting young voters), the issues that the MTV-CBS poll unearthed as most important to young voters might flip the script, at least a bit.

The economy was by far the most important issue to the group -- a noteworthy development that suggests the concerns of young voters are not so different from the worries of the older electorate.

Twenty-two percent of the MTV-CBS sample named the economy as the top issue facing their generation, more than double the proportion who said the same in June 2007.

Much of the unrest among young people about the state of the economy may have to do with their declining job prospects. In the poll, just 3 percent said the job prospects for their age group were "excellent," while a whopping 67 percent called their chances of getting a job either "fair" (42 percent) or "poor" (25 percent).

While about half of the poll's sample said politicians were paying the "right amount" of attention to the economy, 29 percent said those same politicians were devoting enough time to talking about jobs for young people.

The poll also contained heartening news for the mainstream media. More than 7 in 10 respondents said "a lot" of their information about politics comes from either newspapers or television news; 15 percent said they get most of their information about politics from blogs -- Fix readers, unite! -- while 12 percent said they get "a lot" of political information from "late night talk and comedy shows."

Call it the "Obama effect." It could give Republican candidates a run for their money, even in the reddest states.

The senator's campaign announced Friday a 50-state "Vote for Change" registration drive aimed at boosting turnout for Democratic candidates in November. But Obama's grass-roots juggernaut is already rippling through early-primary states, helping local Democratic candidates raise money and identify new voters. In South Carolina, for example, a record-shattering 530,000 Democrats voted in the Jan. 26 primary, topping Republican turnout in this GOP stronghold by 85,000. Obama beat Clinton in South Carolina 2 to 1. But both candidates, along with former senator John Edwards, drew out droves of new Democrats, and after Election Day turned over about 80,000 new e-mail addresses to the state party, which added them to the Democratic National Committee voter file.

One beneficiary is Anton Gunn, Obama's South Carolina political director (and a former Gamecocks offensive lineman), who announced his candidacy for a seat in the state House on Feb. 4. Gunn narrowly lost a 2006 bid for the District 79 seat, but the Republican incumbent, Bill Cotty, is retiring. This time, given the influx of new residents to the area and the strong Democratic primary turnout, Gunn "has a really good chance of winning," said Joe Warner, executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party.

Democratic candidates for House seats in Districts 1 and 2 also have more funding for their campaigns and are reaching more people, thanks to the expanded DNC file. "We feel like we're very competitive in those seats," Warner said. "That voter file, it's so easy to use it's giving our county parties, our precinct presidents, access to information that they've never had before."

As a sign of potential gains to come, Warner pointed to the special House election on Tuesday in Mississippi to pick a successor for Rep. Roger Wicker, who was appointed in January to Trent Lott's Senate seat. Democrat Travis Childers nearly won the deep-red Wicker seat outright but fell just short of the 50 percent of the vote needed to avoid a runoff against GOP candidate Greg Davis. The two will meet again on May 13.

NINE DAYS: Yes, May 6 is already being touted as the next, next, next Super Tuesday in the Democratic nomination race. But it's also a big day down the ballot. In North Carolina, Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue and State Treasurer Richard Moore are duking it out in a contested Democratic primary for governor. Same goes for Indiana, where architect Jim Schellinger and former congresswoman Jill Long Thompson are fighting for the right to take on Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) in the fall.

11 DAYS: Sick of the rubber chicken at most fundraisers? Then take a coffee break with Cindy McCain, the wife of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, here in Washington early next month. "Event co-chairs" must donate and raise $10,000, but you can attend the event for a mere $250. The host committee reads like a who's who of Republican women in Washington: Socialite Juleanna Glover and former congresswoman Susan Molinari are just two of the boldface names.