Early data shows young people showed up in larger-than-anticipated numbers in this year’s midterm elections, potentially providing the margin Democrats needed to blunt the GOP’s much-ballyhooed red wave and proving it’s time for a shift in how the country discusses youth voting.
“People have said, ‘Well, we’ll believe it when we see it,’” said John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics and a top youth vote advisor to President Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020. “We’ve seen it. This is now the third chapter of a new story about young people voting in America. The conventional wisdom on the youth vote needed to change after [former President Donald] Trump’s election.”
If three is a trend ― as the 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections seem to be ― young people’s high engagement is perhaps Democrats’ best source of electoral confidence going forward. Millennials were far more liberal than any prior generation and boosted Democrats during President Barack Obama’s tenure. Gen Z shares their left-leaning viewpoint, and votes at even higher levels. If Democrats keep giving them reasons to show up, advocates and pollsters said, they can expect to continue reaping political rewards.
“We can start to retire some of the myths that have persisted around young people and civic participation,” said Kimberly Inez McGuire, the executive director of the youth abortion rights group URGE. “We have now seen three elections in a row where, by all sorts of metrics, young people are setting and breaking records.”
In a triumphant post-election press conference on Wednesday, Biden himself pointed to young people as potentially decisive.
“I especially want to thank the young people of this nation,” Biden, whose approval ratings among young people have sagged for much of his presidency, told the assembled reporters. “They voted to continue addressing the climate crisis, gun violence, their personal rights and freedoms, and the student debt relief.”
Youth turnout was obviously not the full story of Democrats’ better-than-expected performance in the elections. It’s clear the overturn of Roe v. Wade helped keep even many voters who disapproved of Biden’s performance in the Democratic camp, and the party also successfully persuaded some Republicans and moderates by highlighting the threat to democracy the GOP posed. But it may have provided the margin in key races.
Final numbers on how many young people voted and how much they favored Democrats are weeks or even months away. The two major exit polls ― one sponsored by the three major broadcast networks, the other by the Associated Press ― tell slightly different stories. (Exit polls are flawed instruments, and often shift as they are matched to the actual results.)
The network exit polls showed Democrats absolutely romping, matching the levels of support they hit in 2018 despite a far worse overall political environment. Voters under 45 made up 33% of the electorate, just shy of the 35% mark they hit in 2018. And Democrats won voters under 30 by a 63% to 35% margin, similar to the 67% to 32% margin they hit in 2018.
The Associated Press’ exit poll was less bullish on Democratic margins. It showed people under 45 making up 37% of the electorate, with Democrats winning the under-30 cohort by a 53% to 40% margin.
CIRCLE, a center at Tufts University that studies youth voter participation, estimated 27% of 18-to-29-year-olds voted in 2022, the second-highest number for a midterm election in 30 years and only trailing 2018. In nine swing states, the group said, under-30 turnout was even higher at 31%.
If the exact numbers are still up in the air, the takeaway is not. While young people are unlikely to match the turnout rates of the early bird special crowd anytime soon, their elevated rates of participation and elevated levels of support for Democrats are unlikely to disappear either.
Ben Wessel, the former executive director of NextGen America, which focuses on youth turnout, spent the final week of the election canvassing in Madison, Wisconsin. He said connecting high youth turnout in 2020 to subsequent Democratic achievements was a particularly persuasive message.
“When young people show up, politicians have no choice but to listen to us,” Wessel said. “I was talking to folks about the climate bill, about student debt cancellation, about the gun safety bills. They got it, they can make the connection: ‘We showed up and something good happened.’”
Wisconsin may be the best example of how young people lifted Democrats. In Dane County, home to Madison and the University of Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers won by 174,000 votes ― twice as large as his overall statewide margin of victory.
The pre-election expectations for youth turnout were mixed. While young people were never as tuned out as they were ahead of the 2010 or 2014 midterms, polls showed disparate pictures. Often, broad polls of the electorate showed lagging enthusiasm. But polls specifically focused on youth voters, like the ones Della Volpe conducts at Harvard, showed young people were excited.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which invested far more in the field than they had in past cycles, dedicated massive efforts to reinvigorate campus organizing programs that had withered during the coronavirus pandemic. Working with state parties, they were able to restart College Democrats groups at places like Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, registered more than 1,000 voters in the first week of school at the University of Arizona and Arizona State, and hired a dedicated youth vote coordinator in Wisconsin.
Another key step was last-minute tours around the country from former President Barack Obama and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who both retain immense sway among young people. Each hit multiple major cities and college campuses in the final weeks of the election. Compared to other Democratic-leaning constituencies, young people are more likely to vote in the latter stages of early voting or on Election Day, making last-minute outreach potentially crucial.
Also important was a White House, led by chief of staff Ron Klain, that aggressively tried to turn around Biden’s sagging numbers with young people. In the months leading up to the election, the administration hyped a slew of policies crafted to appeal to young voters, including student debt cancellation, the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act and a reform of marijuana laws.
“The messaging the White House has aimed at young people over the last six months has been totally revolutionary compared to anything any other White House has done,” Wessel said.
Republicans had a slightly different spin on the matter.
“Why did the Democrats do better than expected? Because for two years they have governed as liberals. They’ve governed as whacked out lefty nut jobs,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said on Fox News on Wednesday. “You know what that did? That excited their base. That excited a bunch of young voters who came out in massive numbers.”
More than anything the Biden White House did, however, the conservative Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade may have driven young people to the polls. Polling from URGE has shown 70% of young people wanted to protect abortion rights, regardless of their demographic background. Two-thirds of young people said abortion access was important to their vote in 2022.
“This whole year, young people have been galvanized around abortion access,” Martin said. “The level of ideological unity among young people on this issue has been really clear.”
Della Volpe and Wessel both pointed to Gen Z’s relative lack of cynicism surrounding electoral politics as a major reason youth turnout could continue to grow in coming years.
“Generation Z really seems to view voting as a civic duty,” he said. “Millennials got cynical about politics, and would instead pour their attention into volunteering or doing other things to help their community. Gen Z doesn’t make the choice between those two things.”