The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution passed that same day. No one had expected it that fast: the Supreme Court had only struck down Ted Kennedy and Mike Mansfield’s gambit to lower the voting age by congressional statute the previous December; the Times had predicted a constitutional amendment would “almost certainly not be effective in a presidential election before 1976.” Now eighteen-year-olds would be able to vote in time for 1972. Samuel Lubell, the prescient electoral analyst, wrote in Look: “As of now, the nation’s newest voters would defeat Nixon…. Crammed into my interview notebooks are angry outbursts from business-oriented youths who say, ‘The Republicans are better for my career,’ but vow, ‘I’ll vote for almost any Democrat to end the war.’” Some spoke to him of their gratefulness that younger friends would be turned from a revolutionary path by their ability to vote. The early reports out of California were that despite predictions of widespread youth apathy, or that kids would mimic their parents, 90 percent of eligible high school students were registering, mostly as Democrats. The White House seemed to question its earlier easy assumption that Republicans wouldn’t be hurt by the eighteen-year-old vote.