Newsweek reports that in a new poll of young voters,

12 percent of young voters said they favored Nader over the Republican and Democratic Party candidates.

Yikes.

The poll is conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs; an early-March Ipsos poll of voters of all ages found that Nader got 6% of the vote -- and Bush was beating Kerry by 1%. Results of a newer Ipsos poll has Bush 46%, Kerry 43%, Nader 5%.

OK -- how do I put this without putting twists in Naderite knickers? I mustn't talk about Nader "taking votes away from" Kerry, because I don't need a lecture about daring to presume that anyone owes Kerry a vote. Fair enough. So let me try this: Naderites, do you really think it's such a brilliant frigging idea to have two nationally prominent candidates splitting the anti-Bush vote? There aren't two nationally prominent candidates splitting the pro-Bush vote. Until Bush clones himself and declares that his clone is a candidate to defeat himself, don't you think it just might be a good idea to rally around one electoral Bush slayer?

Oh well -- the news isn't all bad. Young people don't like Bush: Even with Nader in the race, Bush loses to Kerry, 47% - 38%. And

Just 44 percent of young voters approve of the president’s performance in office while 54 percent disapprove.

(Gosh, that's odd -- it wasn't long ago that Newsweek favored us with an article titled "Bush's Secret Weapon: Young Voters," which told us that, according to the same poll in January, 54% of youths approved Bush's job performance.)

The new poll also notes that young people don't get the vapors from on-screen raciness and don't think "politically-active religious groups have too little influence over public policy in the United States."