Gender, youth and race in key Republican primaries

I decided to dig a little into GOP primary (and the Iowa caucus) exit polls in key battleground states, focused primarily on the youth, women and race, to see if anything interesting popped up. Here are the numbers, including exit poll percentages and the corresponding raw vote total for that demographic between 2008 and 2012:

Other than in Iowa, young voters were a smaller percentage of the GOP primary electorate in these key states. (And it's 17-29, because 17-year-olds are allowed to vote in primaries so long as they'll be 18 by November.)

On the other hand, women made up a significantly larger percentage of their electorate compared to 2008. In half these cases, it's because men sat out the contests in greater numbers than they did—in Florida and Arizona, fewer women voted than in 2008, but even fewer men did. But in Ohio and New Hampshire, they showed strength both in percentage terms and in raw votes.

Now turnout was so low in these contests, by any measure, that this may not mean much in November, but if I'm a Republican, I'll take solace in this better gender balance.

As for the fact that Republicans are super-super white, that much continues. Slightly more brown voters turned out for the GOP in Arizona than in 2008, but other than that, Republicans continue to bleed the fastest growing groups.

So what have we learned from these numbers? Given the small universe of GOP primary voters, probably nothing.