Surrounded by about a thousand young progressives at the Campus Progress National Student Conference today, it would be easy for me to assume my generation leans to the left. That assumption, based on a skewed sample population, would be biased enough to make my statistics professor cringe. But it turns out that assumption might be right.

The New York Times reports a new poll that shows “[y]oung Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage.” Check out the results of the NYT/CBS/MTV poll here.

I’m afraid Mo Rocca is right that “Plenty of people will mock the headline of The New York Times' polling piece: ‘New Poll Finds That Young Americans Are Leaning Left.’” Indeed, the Times quickly glosses over the fact that young folks are more optimistic than the rest of Americans (51% vs. 45%) that we’re likely to succeed in Iraq.

No other media outlets have posted their coverage of the poll yet (Fox News might choose to ignore this one) but comparing headlines on this story would probably be as much fun as it was on the recent Supreme Court decisions.

The poll has some good news for election-focused Dems:

More than half of Americans ages 17 to 29 — 54 percent — say they intend to vote for a Democrat for president in 2008. They share with the public at large a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with this group, and of the Republican Party. They hold a markedly more positive view of Democrats than they do of Republicans.

…

At a time when Democrats have made gains after years in which Republicans have dominated Washington, young Americans appear to lean slightly more to the left than the general population: 28 percent described themselves as liberal, compared with 20 percent of the nation at large. And 27 percent called themselves conservative, compared with 32 percent of the general public.

According to Mo, the poll confirms that “young adults are energetic, discerning, healthily skeptical, sometimes pessimistic - but not cynical.” Sounds like the tone I got from today’s conference...except for the whole "optimistic about the war" part.