MyDD crunches some numbers on the youth vote.

CIRCLE now estimates that:

* 23 million young voters cast a ballot on Tuesday, an increase of 3.4 million over 2004.

* Youth turnout will likely top off at 52 - 53%. That would rival the 1992 turnout, and fall just short of the all time record of 55.4% set in 1972.

* Young voters accounted for 60% of the overall turnout increase. That for the whole electorate.

* CIRCLE still estimates that young voters made up 18% of the total electorate.

The big story still remains Obama's staggering 66 - 32% margin among youth...

It's my last year in this particular demographic, so I'm very glad to see what we pulled off. Republican strategists can't be happy with the way that map looks.

The Blueing of America: Pharyngula has your images of the day, the county-by-county election results and the same map rescaled to reflect population. America's getting bluer, which can also be seen in Kevin Drum's comparison of pro-Democratic voting records in 2004 and 2008:

# Income $200,000 or more (+34)
# First-time voters (+33)
# No high school (+27)
# Latinos (+27)
# 18-29 year olds (+25)
# Under $15,000 (+21)
# Full-time workers (+19)
# Urban (+19)
# Non-gun owners (+18)
# Non-religious (+16)
# Parents with children under 18 (+16)

These numbers look good for the future, and the youth numbers are especially important for the reasons I discussed yesterday.

The turnout numbers are getting more and more interesting—it turns out this was a record year for Democratic turnout, not turnout overall. A lot of Republicans just stayed home.

Image of the day: the New York Times's map of changing national demographics between 2004 and 2008. At right: a county-by-county map of places that voted more Democratic this year.

As you can see, it's just about everywhere.

More on demos from The Next Right, which notes with some dismay that "Obama has reshaped the electorate. And it's been only partially through new voter registration. He has gobbled up every last, existing young voter and African American." Given the "stickiness" of both voting behavior and party ID, locking up new voters so completely bespeaks the sort of transformational realignment I've been hoping we'd see.