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Young Voters Weren’t as Enthusiastic for Democrats in the 2022 Midterms

Young Voters Weren’t as Enthusiastic for Democrats in the 2022 Midterms

“Even in places where Democratic support among young voters was strong, voters 18 to 44 tended to be less enthusiastic about candidates they supported than older voters.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyb-DjVT5_c

The Democrats managed to keep the Senate, even picking up a seat, in the 2022 midterms. The party lost the House, but Republicans only have a slight majority.

Democrats celebrated those outcomes, but the party might have problems in 2024 because the young voters in 2022 weren’t as enthusiastic about them. From The Associated Press:

Voters under 30 went 53% for Democratic House candidates compared with only 41% for Republican candidates nationwide, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping national survey of the electorate. But that level of support for Democrats was down compared with 2020, when such voters supported President Joe Biden over his predecessor, Donald Trump, 61% to 36%. And in 2018, when Democrats used a midterm surge to retake control of the House, voters 18 to 29 went 64% for the party compared with 34% for the GOP.

Biden’s party nonetheless exceeded midterm expectations, holding the Senate and surrendering only a small Republican House majority. The president himself hailed young voter turnout as “historic.” Still, the trend line for younger voters may be an early indicator of the Democrats’ challenge to maintain the coalition of Black people, women, college-educated voters, city dwellers and suburbanites that has buoyed the party in the years since Trump won the White House.

Weakness in any part of that voting bloc could have implications during the next presidential race. Biden, who will be a few weeks shy of his 82nd birthday on Election Day 2024, says he intends to run again. Trump, 76, has already announced his candidacy.

“There might have been retrenchment in youth voters,” said Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida and an expert on voting and data.

McDonald warned the data “could be an anomaly” since the “[Y]oungest people also have the weakest partisan attachments.”

Voters under 45 “exceeded” Biden’s 2020 support in the governor races in three states and the Pennsylvania Senate race:

Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman beat Republican celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s Senate contest while getting 62% of the vote of those 18 to 44. That was slightly better than Biden’s 56% with such voters in 2020. In the Pennsylvania governor’s race, Democrat Josh Shapiro also won while outpacing Biden’s support in 2020, earning 64% of that age group.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly won a second term by modestly outperforming 2020 margins with voters under 45 in the red state, 52% to Biden’s 45%. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also commandingly secured reelection while garnering a somewhat larger percentage of the state’s voters under 45 in 2022, 61%, than Biden did in 2020, 54%.

About 36% of “voters under 45 identify as progressive Democrats.” Only 20% of the older voters hold those views.

But the normal, which has gone on for a while, is that young voters tend to be independent:

Not being fully enamored with one party or the other also showed up in VoteCast results. Even in places where Democratic support among young voters was strong, voters 18 to 44 tended to be less enthusiastic about candidates they supported than older voters.

That was true in the swing states of Arizona, where Democrats won the Senate and governor’s race, and in Wisconsin, where the party won the governorship but Republican Sen. Ron Johnson was reelected. And in Georgia, where Republican Gov. Brian Kemp was reelected but Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock secured a second term in a runoff.

Santiago Mayer, a political science major at California State University, Long Beach who founded the student-led advocacy group Voters of Tomorrow, said those findings didn’t surprise him given that young voters tend to be independent. But he also said many are also deeply progressive, which means that currently, “Republicans have declared war against Generation Z.”

“Young voters are voting against Republicans, and Democrats are obviously the better option,” said Mayer, 20, whose group used volunteers nationwide to call and text Georgia voters ages 18 to 29 some 2.5 million times. “But eventually, when we’ll have two years when Republicans hopefully will transition back to sanity, the emphasis will be in getting elected officials that actually represent what Gen Z wants.”

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Comments

Gen Z wants their abortions, so they aren’t going to vote Republican anytime soon.

Subotai Bahadur | December 12, 2022 at 3:13 pm

1) The odds of a real election in 2024 are highly dubious, so the enthusiasm of younger voters is not germane.

2) The Democrat Party has learned how to manufacture and count any number of votes needed, AND they know that there is no chance of the Republicans interfering with the process.

Subotai Bahadur

    Data analysis shows some of the election results are total BS and we’re supposed to take this crap seriously? We are approaching Brazil in 2024.

    The_Mew_Cat in reply to Subotai Bahadur. | December 12, 2022 at 5:51 pm

    Enthusiasm is not germane anyway. A lot of people voted for the Democrats anyway, even if they weren’t enthusiastic about it.

    Don’t worry: the McLosers will save us:

    McConnell
    McDaniels
    McCarthy

      Trump made the choice of picking all of the worst candidates he could find for loyalty to stop the steal.

      American voters rejected Trump in 2022; if he had not put himself into the election we could have made it about Biden.

        Virginia42 in reply to Danny. | December 13, 2022 at 7:18 am

        Considering the Dem did their usual cheating, aided and abetted by the GOPe, your statement isn’t all that accurate, though I agree about some of his candidates.

          There wasn’t any cheating in the 2022 elections. We won the governorship of Virginia while we didn’t run on stop the steal because AMERICANS DON’T LIKE STOP THE STEAL BECAUSE ITS A LIE.

          We ran on a lie that has a natural suppression effect on our side and encourages turnout on the Democrat side and lost and it was because of Donald J Trump.

          Michigan and New Hampshire and Pennsylvania looked like California because we picked Trump’s candidates.

          Democrats spent millions boosting candidates like Bolduc in the primary for very good reason.

As long as voter rolls can be manipulated, Gen Z’s votes, as well as others, won’t matter.

    Joe Biden appreciates your active participation in operation demoralize. Remember while the country will become a leftist authoritarian state due to your efforts you truly are Biden’s special demoralizing agent.

I would like to hear more about AZ. I see it mentioned in the article above. I was beginning to think we were back to 49 states.

“But eventually, when we’ll have two years when Republicans hopefully will transition back to sanity, the emphasis will be in getting elected officials that actually represent what Gen Z wants.”

Ask not what you country can do for you, ya snowflakes.

    You usually understand that when it comes to issues of do the voters love or hate this particular personality the voters are always right. It is one thing to sacrifice votes for principles, it is another to do so for personalities.

Not buying it. Therese probably a large percentage of lazies or clowns that chose some stupid option just to think they are hip and different. It doesn’t count if they still vote lockstep for Dems.

I guess the voters regardless of age feel that the country is on the right track and that the ongoing polls that give Congress as a whole an unfavorable rating mean squat.
Every incumbent senator on the ballot won re-election in 2022. Only 9 house incumbents ( 6 dem and 3 repub ) lost their bid for re-election according to Ballotpedia. Take away those who retired from the house or ran for other seats, the odds of being kept in office was about 97-98% regardless of party.
This is where the real issue lays, I am sure there were many reasons why a particular congress person keeps their seat but a re-election rate over 97-98% considering all the current unresolved issues this country is facing today is unexplainable to me.

    r2468 in reply to buck61. | December 13, 2022 at 12:29 am

    It’s odd how the approval rating of Congress is so low and the re-election rate is so high. Somehow that works out in favor of the politicians. That’s a feature they definitely like. Maybe the election process works in their favor along with name recognition, funding and help from the party.

Wait until the kidlings realize that education “loan forgiveness” was a bait and switch.

I mean the two who will eventually figure this out. One of them will be offended.

I scrolled down through the topics and I see lots of international articles but nothing on AZ lawsuits. I was hoping this legal blog might post something. I’ll keep asking. After all Christmas is coming.

Bitterlyclinging | December 13, 2022 at 5:10 pm

The young’s political choices are usually dictated by the tingling they feel on their scrotum. Twas the case with Baracky Obammunist. Logic and reason do not stand a chance against estrogen and testosterone.