When the polls closed on Super Tuesday, only two things were perfectly clear – that John… When the polls closed on Super Tuesday, only two things were perfectly clear – that John McCain is the likely Republican nominee, and that this is one hell of a race.

But there were some other less obvious winners Tuesday night, and both of their victories have big implications for the young voter.

The first group is the Democrats who, according to some early figures posted by Time, trounced Republican turnout last night with more than twice the amount of primary voters going for Democrats in some states. Though the winner of the Democratic race was far from decided, and some of these figures were from states with high populations of Democrats, the increased turnout suggested by those figures means much for the party. If those numbers continue into the general election, the Democratic candidate will be much more difficult to beat than previously suggested by head-to-head matchups predicted by some polling websites like Real Clear Politics.

The second group, though, is the youth vote itself, because collegiate voters – whose editorial boards largely endorsed John McCain and Barack Obama – were considerably successful Tuesday night in seeing their candidates through. For young conservatives, it meant the stunning victory of a man strongly disliked by the Republican establishment but respected by young and independent voters for his principled politics. On the other side of the aisle, Barack Obama, considered by many to be the young person’s candidate, surged in the primaries. Coming up just short of Hillary Clinton, who a few months ago seemed unbeatable on her way to the nomination, Obama’s campaign rode a wave of momentum built largely on the excitement and enthusiasm of its youth movement. He has come up only about 25 delegates short of Clinton, according to the Washington Post, and with primaries coming up in states like Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia, Hawaii and Washington, D.C., later this week, his chances at securing the nomination going forward are quite good. If he wins the nomination, he will have our age group to thank for sparking excitement and lending the legitimacy that brought his candidacy to the fore. But even if he doesn’t get the nomination, the fact that young people seem to be getting their way this year – and that it appears they may be voting with more frequency (according to some exit polls 43 percent of the under-30 crowd voted in the New Hampshire primary, for example) is an exciting prospect for our generation. For once, it seems, we’re getting what we want and having an impact. What this means for our issues – the already out-of-control costs of a college education, the trouble of finding health care when we enter the workforce, the difficulty paying back our student loans – is tangibly probably very little. But the importance of having a politically energized voting bloc and politicians who recognize the importance of listening to young voters cannot be understated. As the generation most likely to inherit the Social Security crisis and our image abroad, the generation most likely to have our futures affected by this generation’s policies and the generation most likely to die for the future of the country, the stakes couldn’t be higher. And in some serious ways, the importance of having a candidate who inspires our confidence and represents our generation to the world might be just as important for our future as having someone who cares about our issues.

And that’s why it’s so exciting to see that the youthful politics we value so much – the politics of hope, of change, of integrity, of principle, of “yes we can,” are proving a little more than hype this year. At least so far.

E-mail Marin at [email protected].