Voters flock to the polls in North Carolina and Indiana today in what could be pivotal contests for Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And if recent trends hold true, many voters will share one common characteristic: youth.

"All signs point toward a continuing trend," Peter Levine, director of CIRCLE, a University of Maryland research center on civic engagement and youth, told USA Today. "These people will be more involved for their life to come."

Youth voters in the 2004 general election held steady at about 18 percent of the electorate, according to USA Today. In 2008, the percentage of young people eligible to vote who participated in primaries and caucuses rose in 15 states where comparisons to 2000 or 2004 were possible.

Other statistics that USA Today cites include:

§         In five USA Today/Gallup polls since mid-February, 57 percent of people younger than 30 said they have given "quite a lot" of thought to the election, up from 44 percent in 2004. And 87 percent said they plan to vote, up from 81 percent in 2004.

§         One-quarter of voters younger than 30 in a recent CBS-MTV poll said they had worked on a campaign, joined a political club or attended a political rally or march.

It's a national trend that's been noticed by many, including Chrissy Faessen, communications director for Rock the Vote, who told DiversityInc she believes the trend would continue for the duration of the political season. "We've seen this building since 2000. Young people have been increasingly engaged, and this could be the third election in a row where young people have increased their turnout," says Faessen. "As we've seen in Iowa all the way through the recent primaries, young people are passionate and really care about changing the way the future looks, so they're standing up and going to the polls in record numbers."

Faessen adamantly believes that capturing the youth vote will be critical to any candidate in both the primary and general election. "Young people make up about one-fifth of the entire electorate, so that's 44-million-people strong this election cycle that can propel candidates to victory. So I think they are aware of the power young people have in this election," she says.

Why are young people responding in such droves? The answer is marketing, according to Howard Buford, president and CEO of Prime Access, a multicultural-marketing firm.

"This is very much a marketing situation," says Buford. "Consider the candidates as brands. You have to have an authentic brand because they embrace authenticity and direct messages that are inclusive. They don't like being pitted against each other or having groups pitted against each other because their whole network of friends and sometimes even family is diverse, so they don't like group divisiveness. They see themselves as not being isolated or categorized into a group, and to do so goes against their own social networks."

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