After he'd fought Hillary Clinton to something resembling a draw on Super Tuesday, Barack Obama stood on his home soil of Illinois and declared: "Our time has come. Our movement is real. And change is coming to America."

Obama's "movement" might still founder under the disciplined assault of Hillary Clinton's campaign. But until that time, it is powered in large part by the inexhaustible idealism of young American voters, who are turning out in extraordinary numbers in the Democratic primaries. In Georgia, for example, people 18 to 29 as a percentage of all voters increased from 11 percent in the 2004 primary to 17 percent last week. The increase was typical of other primary states, and in nearly all cases, the majority of that younger vote went to Obama.

"It looks a bit like 1972," said Thomas Patterson, professor of government and the press at Harvard's Shorenstein Center and author of "The Vanishing Voter" (2002). The year before, in the midst of the Vietnam War, the states had ratified the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age to 18. "There was nearly 50 percent turnout among young voters," Patterson said of the '72 election. "We've never been back to that level before, but we could get there this time."

So. Is Obama's candidacy an actual movement or just an interesting political campaign? Movements, of course, usually form around ideas, not people. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the towering figures of the 20th century, but the movement he led was even greater than he was.

Still, many of the young people backing Obama aren't just supporters. They're believers.

"I've seen it among young kids," said John Geer, political science professor at Vanderbilt University. "And I'm not talking about 18-year-olds. I'm talking about 10-year-olds. They like Barack. Maybe not for very reasonable reasons —- they're 10. But there's interest there as well, and it's really quite amazing."

Scholars who have studied U.S. movements suggest that Obama is, indeed, part of a movement, but one that he didn't start.

This "movement" began with the country itself. The founders had a narrow notion of citizenship —- as the preserve of white male landowners. But that notion rapidly evolved.

"The abolitionists were the first generation to conceptualize what it meant to be an American in the modern sense of the word; that to be an American meant to be rich, poor, black, white, male, female," said Omar H. Ali, assistant professor of history at Towson University, near Baltimore. "They had a new vision of the founding documents, to extend the notion of all men being created equal to all people being created equal. Those are really the founding fathers and mothers of our country."

This impulse toward democracy, toward fairness for all , has animated many movements in American history —- the Populists, whose presidential candidate won a million votes in 1892; the Progressives, who advocated an activist government to remedy social ills, in the early 1900s; and certainly the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century.

Ali, author of the forthcoming "In the Balance of Power: Independent Black Politics and Third-Party Movements in the United States" (Ohio University Press, 2008), believes that Obama has tapped into the same rich vein that produced the Populists, the Progressives and the civil rights movement.

"The thing that is most captivating about Obama is that he's speaking in nonpartisan terms," he said. "He's not speaking solely as a Democrat. He's speaking as an American who wants to rally fellow Americans around something wider, bigger, more hopeful."

Fueled by independents

Jackie Salit, editor of Neo-Independent magazine and independentvoter.org, concurs that Obama is tapping into a movement that is much larger than himself. But, seen through her lens, that movement is of independent voters.

She notes that independents comprise between 35 and 40 percent of American voters, and that their numbers continue to grow.

"You look for signs that new kinds of partnerships are emerging and becoming viable in the mainstream," Salit said. "And to me, one of the very interesting partnerships that is emerging is what I would call the black and independents alliance.

"Obama is the spokesperson for it. He is the candidate around whom this has galvanized. He does have a feel —- and I think independents respond very strongly to this —- for why it is that so many people are not Democrats or Republicans."

In this key respect, Salit maintains, Obama is starkly different from Clinton.

"She comes out of a different tradition. She's a core-constituency Democrat; I don't think she has a feel for or, frankly, a respect for the fact that so many people have a distaste for party politics. I think she likes party politics. She and her husband have built a career on it."

Salit notes that Obama and Republican John McCain —- the latter has clinched his campaign, while the former could still lose his —- are both popular among independents. McCain's identification with the war in Iraq has hurt him with independent voters, she said, but his own independent streak is still appealing to many Americans.

"Given McCain does have a history of appeal to independent voters, that makes it all the more important for Democrats to select a candidate who can coalesce with those voters," she said.

Obama as vice president?

Should Obama lose, what becomes of the movement he has fostered? Does all the energy evaporate? Do the young people who have supported him revert to self-absorption and political cynicism?

"I think there's a chance of a backlash," said John Geer at Vanderbilt. "But if Hillary Clinton emerges victorious, she will look at the landscape and realize that she has to beg Obama to be her VP. If indeed he was VP, a lot of those unhappy troops would not be totally satisfied, but they would be placated.

"Ironically, if he wins, there'd be less pressure to put her on the ticket. If she wins, there'll be a lot of pressure to put him on the ticket."

Thomas Patterson at Harvard agrees.

"I think Obama's going to be on the ticket, first or second," he said. "There's just going to be a huge amount of pressure on her."

It's anybody's guess whether Obama would actually accept such an offer.

"It's going to depend to a degree on how Obama sees the strategic situation; whether he thinks his interests would be better served, either in terms of his own political ambitions or the policies he's favoring," said David Rohde, political science professor at Duke University.

"Part of the calculation on both sides is what kind of role Clinton sees for the vice president. If he's just to be an old, shunted-to-the-side, go-to-official-functions kind of vice president —- sort of what the Kennedys did to Johnson —- he might decide it's just not palatable. If it's more like Clinton-Gore, or Bush-Cheney, it might be more attractive."

'He'll join us together'

For Breone Davis, this talk of second place is unnecessary, because her guy is going to win. "Senator Obama's youthfulness and energy —- I've heard him speak several times —- he makes me feel as if he will make a difference, not just for my generation but for others as well," said Davis, 24.

Davis graduated from Clark Atlanta University last year but goes back to campus every Tuesday to speak to freshmen about Obama.

She voted for Bush in 2004. But Obama has changed things, including her. And race, Davis said, isn't part of the equation.

"My generation is color-blind," she said. "We don't look at people for black or white. My grandmother is saying, 'He can't be president because he's black.' But the upcoming generations, X and Y, are blind to the whole race issue. We're so distant from the baby boomers.

"But he'll join us all together."

HEAVIER YOUNG DEMOCRATIC TURNOUT

In the Democratic primaries, younger voters turned out in larger numbers this year than in 2004 in every state, according to exit polls. The percentages beneath the turnout years indicate younger voters as a proportion of all voters that day. The percentages under each candidate's name indicate the proportion of the age 18-29 vote each received. The gray boxes indicate that the candidate carried that state.

..............18-29 turnout

Primary........2008....2004..Clinton ......Obama

Arizona..........8% ....7% ..37%[carried]..59%

California......16%....11% ..51%[carried]..47%

Connecticut ....10% ....5% ..39% ..........58%[carried]

Georgia ........17%....11% ..23% ..........75%[carried]

Iowa............22%....17% ..11% ..........57%[carried]

Massachusetts ..14% ....9% ..49%[carried]..48%

Missouri........14% ....9% ..30% ..........65%[carried]

New Hampshire ..18%....14% ..22%[carried]..57%

New York........15% ....8% ..43%[carried]..56%

South Carolina..14% ....9% ..23% ..........67%[carried]

Tennessee ......13% ....7% ..44%[carried]..53%