Tamar,

>FWIW, my 18-year-old son, voting in his first election, spent about half a Saturday on-line checking out the candidates, reading their websites and other sites to determine who he wanted to vote for. My guess is that he did more research than 80% of voters.

Same here. My 18-year-old daughter studied ahead of time, and is now staying glued to the commentators on TV -- getting quite an education in the process.