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Remember all the debates over whether young people would actually turn out for Obama? In addition to videos like this and photos like the ones below, we now have some preliminary statistical answers:

Young voters diverged sharply from the population as a whole, preferring Obama/Biden over McCain/Palin by 66% to 32% in the NEP. This is by far the highest share of the youth vote obtained by any candidate since exit polls began reporting results by age categories in 1976.

But that’s just percentages of a whole. What is the whole itself? What are we talking about in terms of the actual number of young voters who turned out? Some more numbers, again preliminary:

An estimated 21.6 million-23.9 million young Americans voted in Tuesday’s presidential election, an increase of at least 2.2 million compared with 2004, according to national exit polls, demographic data, and projections of total numbers of votes cast.