A recent Boston Globe article touts the potent power of a growing 18-24 year old voting bloc:

Spurred into action by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq, youths 18 to 24 years of age have dramatically accelerated their participation in politics, both at the ballot box and on college campuses. After a steady decline in youth voting since the close of the Vietnam War, young voter participation increased from 36 percent in 2000 to 47 percent in 2004, representing a huge jump. Analysts also project that the final statistics from 2006 will show it to be a record year for youth voting in a midterm congressional election.

Not only are the statistics pointing towards greater youth turnout in 2008, but these voters are also more likely to bring a progressive mindset into the polling booth:

Further, the current crop of young voters is trending more Democratic -- unlike the previous generation of youth -- giving the eventual Democratic nominee a key advantage in the general election, according to two independent surveys of young voters.

"We've got the potential for this to be like SDS on steroids," said John Della Volpe , director of polling at Harvard University's Institute of Politics, referring to the Vietnam-era Students for a Democratic Society.

Young people are driven by a strong moralistic streak -- not so much on conservative social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, but on matters such as poverty, climate change, and the genocide in Darfur, according to polling by the Institute of Politics, which has conducted an ongoing survey of young people since 2000.

Young voters favor Senator Barack Obama of Illinois among the Democratic contenders and Giuliani among the GOP candidates, according to the Institute of Politics survey. College supporters of both men cited a mutual desire to elect someone they said was not mired down in Washington politics and who could unite the country.

While the jump in young voters stands to have a big impact on both parties' primaries, Democrats are well positioned to benefit from the trend in the general election. Unlike the previous generation -- the voting patterns of which largely mirrored the electorate as a whole -- the current crop of young voters is increasingly Democratic, according to a survey of "Generation Next" by the Pew Research Center.

"This is the first time since the 1970s that young people have voted significantly differently than the rest of the country," favoring Democrats more heavily than the rest of the electorate, said Andrew Kohut , director of the nonpartisan Pew center. "I think it's the times. It's the war."

While final numbers have not been released, early data on spikes in regional voting indicate that young voters played a pivotal role in electing Democratic senators Jim Webb of Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana in 2006, victories that helped give Democrats control of the US Senate, Della Volpe said.

By only focusing on the presidential race, the article fails to recognize a key aspect of the broader potential effect of a strong young voting bloc next year: another major congressional tidal wave for Dems.