Some young Clinton supporters have recently chafed under what they said was becoming an annoying kind of group-think in Obama’s favour.

As she trudged through the snow that blanketed the University of Denver campus, Krishma Parsad (27) said she was resisting Obama fever. Parsad, whose home is in California, recently cast an absentee vote for Clinton.

Tori Spillane, an 18-year-old student at an all-girls Catholic high school in West St Paul, called Obama’s popularity with her peers “frustrating,” saying, “he just picks them up”.

Elsewhere, many young people seemed immune to the charms of Obama or any other candidate. On a Manhattan subway car packed with people who turned out for a parade to honor the New York Giants, not a single member of the jersey-wearing crowd voiced an intention to vote.

And at the computer bank of the DePaul University student center in Chicago, the nonvoters outnumbered the voters, for a variety of reasons, they said, including failure to register, lack of time and apathy.