More young adults are registered to vote in key battleground states than in 2018, itself a record year – except among those newly eligible to cast a ballot.
That’s the conclusion drawn by researchers at the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement who analyzed voter registration data from 41 states.
“The 2018 election saw the highest youth turnout of any midterm in history. Given that registration numbers in most states, including many battleground states, are higher than this last historic midterm, it seems to be a positive sign for young people’s participation in the 2022 midterms,” said CIRCLE’e election coordinator, Ruby Belle Booth.
But it’s not all positive news.
“Unfortunately, the data also highlights work to be done in future elections to better engage new voters, especially the youngest eligible voters,” Booth said. “It also indicates the vast inequities that occur across states in effective youth voter engagement; that’s a problem for our democracy. So, while the data offers positive indicators for the 2022 midterms, it prescribes work to be done after November 9th as we prepare for 2024 and beyond.”
Overall, voter registration is up 6 percent from the last midterms among people ages 18-24. The biggest increases occurred in Michigan (up 38 percent), Kansas (29 percent) and Colorado (20 percent).
Michigan is home to a tight gubernatorial race, where the Democratic incumbent, Gretchen Whitmer, has seen her once-commanding lead in the polls shrink to just 5 percentage points with a week remaining. The increase can be attributed, at least in part, to a pair of systems rolled out in 2019: online voter registration and automatic voter registration at motor vehicle agencies.
Similarly, Democrat Laura Kelly is locked in a tough battle to remain governor of Kansas.
While Kansas does not use the same voter registration tools as those other states, many people were motivated to register in advance of the summer’s primary, when an abortion measure was on the ballot.
“The increase in registrations in Kansas does suggest that the abortion ballot measure was mobilizing for young people and brought a lot of new young voters into the electorate,” said Booth. “Michigan and California both also show significant increases from 2018, and they both also have abortion on the ballot this November, which further supports the influence that abortion is having on young people’s registrations in this election cycle.”
However, Booth believes there is more at play than just a single issue motivating people.
“Kansas’s registration numbers have continued to rise since the primary in August, which highlights that young people are engaged beyond just the abortion issue. Our Youth Electoral Significant Index ranks the Kansas gubernatorial race as the third top gubernatorial race where young people could have a major impact on the outcome if they turnout; it looks like young people in Kansas may be paying close attention to that race as well.”
The Democratic candidates have more comfortable leads in both the governor and Senate races in Colorado, which also offers online and automatic voter registration.
Nevada also saw a big jump, with voter registration up 18 percent among the youngest voters. That state is home to both Senate and gubernatorial contests that are neck-and-neck going into the final week of election season.
In fact, registrations are up in more than half (23 of 41) of the states for which data was available. The biggest decline occurred in South Dakota, which dropped 36 percent, followed by Rhode Island and Kentucky (both down 17 percent).
“Different states have different problems engaging young people; elements that vary across states like facilitative voter laws, civic education, or infrastructure supporting young people’s democratic participation all could be to blame in different states,” Booth said. “But looking at the data as a whole, we see a failure to register new young voters compared to 2018. This can especially be seen in the data among 18-19 year olds.”
In fact, while most states saw an overall increase, the number of 18- and 19-year-olds registering declined 5 percent and only 13 states were in positive territory compared to 2018.
There was a huge organizing push in both 2018 and 2020 that paid dividends in registration and turnout numbers for those elections. The 18-24 registration data reflects the efforts in 2018 and 2020 since that age group was targeted for those elections, while the 18-19 data offers a clearer look at some of the shortcomings this year and the opportunity that exists to better engage young voters in future elections,” Booth said. “While there were absolutely a lot of individuals and organizations, many led by young people themselves, working hard to prepare young voters for the 2022 midterms, the data suggests that efforts to reach out to new young voters weren’t as robust as in 2018.
Idaho led the way with an 81 percent increase, followed by Michigan (52 percent) and Kansas (42 percent). Booth pointed to a few reasons for that massive increase.
"First, Idaho is one of the fastest growing states in the country. Second, it had a hotly contested, high-turnout primary election in May that bolstered registration across all ages. Third, because Idaho is a less populous state, it [can have] bigger percentage increases that reflect a smaller number of new registrants. … Fourth, it is another state where abortion has been at the center of political discourse, which maybe could have had an impact. And lastly, there may have been some good efforts on the ground to get young people registered, but we don’t know much details about what those may have been or their impact,” Booth said.
The CIRCLE research notes that the 2018 election featured the highest turnout among young voters since the voting age was lowered to 18, so this year’s data is being measured against historic numbers.
More young women than men have registered to vote in 2022 (53 percent of the new registrants are women). Previous cycles were more closely divided, according to the researchers.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.