Two of the primary issues driving the news this year – abortion rights and inflation – are also driving young voters’ plans for participating in the midterm elections, according to new survey data.
But those issues are not equally motivating all millennials and members of Generation Z. Rather, 60 percent of Democrats and left-leaning independents in battleground states are motivated by protecting abortion rights while 80 percent of Republicans and right-leaning independents are focused on the economy and inflation.
The survey, conducted by the Alliance for Youth Action and Civiqs, concentrated on people ages 17-39 in 11 battleground states.
While the parties were split on the top motivator to cast a ballot, respondents were united in concerns about inflation when reviewed by race. Fifty-one percent of the total listed inflation and the economy as one of the top three issues driving them to vote, including 50 percent of white people, 46 percent of Black people, 69 percent of Latinos and 43 percent of everyone else. Abortion was second in each group, although “democracy reform and voting rights” was a very close third among Black people and those who did not fall into one of the three primary categories.
Similarly, when the respondents were split into smaller age groups, inflation and economy remained the top motivator in all cohorts, again followed by protecting acces to abortion and then democracy reform.
According to the U.S. Election Project, the turnout rate is increasing among young people faster than in older age groups. If that trend continues, adults under age 40 are going to be an increasingly influential voter bloc.
The survey found that 86 percent of respondents said they intend to vote in 2022.
“Once again, all eyes will be on the youth vote, and this poll shows that young people across the political spectrum in battleground states are extremely motivated to vote in this midterm election,” said Civiqs Director Drew Linzer.
Just more than half (53 percent) said they will vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress, with 42 percent supporting Republican candidates. Majorities among white and Black respondents also back Democrats, but 56 percent of Latino respondents said they will vote for Republicans.
And it appears political campaigns have learned from past turnout data and are doing more outreach to young voters.
“The good news for political campaigns is that, in contrast to the polling we did with the Alliance in the months leading up to the 2020 election, young voters in battleground states say political campaigns are contacting them in various ways,” Linzer said. However, young rural voters and young Black voters are the most likely to say they have not been contacted by a political campaign this cycle.”
Two-third of Americans ages 18 and over voted in the 2020 election, but only 51 percent of those 18-24 and 63 percent of the 25-44 cohort, according to the Census Bureau. Of course that was a hard-fought, divisive presidential election that resulted in record turnout.
In 2018, the last midterm election, just 53 percent of Americans voted, including one-third of those 18-24 and 46 percent of people 25-44.
According to data analyzed by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, voter registration among young people trails the midpoint of 2018 in about half the states.
Of the 11 states included in the Alliance for Youth Action/Civiqs survey, voter registration among the under-40 cohort is up in six states, including the three with the biggest jumps: Michigan (up 35 percent), Nevada (28 percent) and Arizona (24 percent). Registration is down in three states; data was unavailable for two (New Hampshire and Wisconsin).
Civiqs surveyed 2,332 registered voters, all under the age of 40, Aug. 11-15. Those voters live in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Thirty-eight percent identified as Democrats, 24 percent as Republicans and 37 percent as independents.
According to CIRCLE’s Youth Electoral Significance Index, young voters are best positioned to influence Senate races in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada the gubernatorial races in Wisconsin, Arizona and Kansas.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.