Last month I reported that Rock the Vote, a bipartisan effort designed to promote voting among young people, partnered up with Microsoft for a campaign that aimed to inform, via the Xbox 360, potential voters about the positions of the candidates, the parties and to encourage young persons to register to vote in the election.

The big news is that more than 55,000 forms for voter registration have been downloaded through the Xbox Live service, which means that at least as many gamers are interested in registering so that they can vote in the upcoming elections in the United States. I'm hoping that they are interested in the congressional races as much as in the race between Barack Obama and John McCain.

More than 100,000 votes were cast by Xbox Live users in an opinion poll which compared the Democratic and the Republican tickets. The opinion poll ran for just three days, so the number of votes is more impressive; the Democratic ticket, made up of Obama and Joe Biden, managed to get 43% of the virtual vote while the Republican ticket, of John McCain and Sarah Palin, only received 31% of the vote.

The results of this poll pretty much reflect the overall make up of the youth vote, which has been gravitating towards Senator Obama since he launched his candidacy last year. The race for President of the United States is pretty much tied at the moment, with most polls giving Senator Obama a small lead that is within the error margin.

It's pretty much expected that, this year, young people will turn up in greater numbers and vote, mainly because of higher voter registration and because of more get-out-and-vote campaigns like the one delivered via the Xbox 360.