"Younger voters are the last ones to truly focus on an election because for many of them it's their first," he said. "Voters who are just now checking in from disinterested to interested — they're catching whiff of this Obama movement, and they're seeing this bandwagon they want to jump on."

Though Obama has the most visible young voter outreach, other campaigns haven't given up on the MySpace and Facebook generation.

Chelsea Clinton is her mother's appeal to young professionals. McCain has his own social networking Web site known as McCainSpace. And Mike Huckabee — with his self-deprecating humor — courts the youth vote via appearances on late-night television and Comedy Central.

Like any demographic bloc, not all young people vote alike. As with the rest of the country, young voters are almost evenly split between Republicans and Democrats — though the center of gravity has drifted gradually to the left since the 2000 election.

There's also a difference between how the youngest of young voters — high school and college students — approach issues compared to young professionals.

Jonathan Davis is a 27-year-old government and history teacher at Lloyd Memorial High School in Erlanger, Ky., another state that allows 17-year-olds who will be 18 by Election Day to vote in the primary. He's only a decade older than his students but sees a difference in how they approach elections. Intellect, experience, problem-solving and rhetorical skills are important to him — as are issues like the Iraq war.

His students?

"They're more personality driven," he said. "It is a little more superficial. To be honest, I've heard a lot more buzz from people about Obama. And Clinton, you either love her or hate her. And all they remember about Bill Clinton is Monica Lewinsky"

Take Sierra Gregory, an 18-year-old student from Covington, Ky. She likes Hillary Clinton but says some of her schoolmates hate her.

"She's a strong, independent woman. I loved Bill, and Hillary's a lot like him," she said. As for Obama: "I like him, it's just hard to explain. I'm more for the whole women's rights thing."

She admits to being drawn into the pure drama of the campaign — like the latest Obama "plagiarism" scandal in which Clinton has accused him of borrowing too much from speeches by his friend, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

"It's like an episode of 'Nip/Tuck,"' Gregory said, referring to a soap opera-like series on the cable channel FX.