Yes, I know it’s WAYYY too early to be talking about the elections, but I can’t help it; much as I dislike politicians, I’m mesmerized by politics. It’s like chess, but with the future of the country at stake.

Having said that, feel free to ignore anything tagged “politics” for the next few months. You won’t miss anything but my inane rambling anyway.

According to this, Hillary is doing terrible amongst the 18-35 crowd and I can hazard a guess as to why. Video games.

Hillary has a history of coming down in favor of regulating the gaming industry with rules that are not applied to other industries with violent and sexual content (from senate.gov):

“The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and other games like it is stealing the innocence of our children and it’s making the difficult job of being a parent even harder,” said Senator Clinton. “I am announcing these measures today because I believe that the ability of our children to access pornographic and outrageously violent material on video games rated for adults is spiraling out of control.”

Senator Clinton announced that the legislation she will introduce will put some teeth into video game ratings by instituting a financial penalty for retailers who fail to enforce the rules. It will prohibit the sale of violent and sexually explicit video games to minors and put in place a $5000 penalty for those who violate the law.

While I can agree that defending children from inappropriate material is a worthy cause, you have to take into account that the majority of today’s voters are an overlap of both the young voters that have grown up being told nonsense like “video games are murder simulators” and are sick of the rhetoric and the aging gamers of yester-year that have survived the launching of the gaming industry along with the witch hunts that followed games like Mortal Kombat and Primal Instinct. Indeed, the ESA reports that 47.6% of gamers fall within the 18-46 age range, which is exactly the age group Hillary is (if you believe polls) out of touch with.

Let’s also couple this with the fact that, in the month of September alone, Nintendo pushed 501,000 units of the Wii for a 4.5 million total units sold since November 2006 and 495,800 units of the DS for a 13.2 million lifetime total (I’m not sure when the DC started shipping).

This is even more impressive when you look at the age-range of people buying (and actually playing) these units. The ESA reports the following interesting facts:

• Sixty-seven percent of American heads of households play computer and video games.
• The average game player is 33 years old and has been playing games for 12 years.
• The average age of the most frequent game buyer is 38 years old. In 2007, 92 percent of computer game buyers and 80 percent of console game buyers were over the age of 18.
• Eighty-six percent of game players under the age of 18 report that they get their parents’ permission when renting or buying games, and 91 percent say their parents are present when they buy games.
• Thirty-six percent of American parents say they play computer and video games. Further, 80 percent of gamer parents say they play video games with their kids. Sixty-six percent feel that playing games has brought their families closer together.
• In 2007, 24 percent of Americans over the age of 50 played video games, an increase from nine percent in 1999.

These statistics tend to deflate any politician’s cries of video games “stealing the innocence of our children” (remember, ESA reports 92% of game buyers are above 18 and 86% of those under 18 report having their parent’s permission or having a parent present when buying games) and just show them as pandering to an older, more reserved demographic that’s fading fast (ESA reports that 24% of Americans over 50 play video games).

I suppose it could all be coincidence, but what all of this should tells me is that Hillary is unpopular with the gaming crowd, which happens to be a larger percentage of voters than politicians are considering.