Initial estimates of turnout data show more than one-quarter of young adults voted in the 2022 elections, the second highest midterm turnout rate in the past 30 years.
While votes are still being counted and the data will be refined, the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement projects 27 percent of people ages 18-29 voted in the midterms, trailing just 2018’s 31 percent.
“We’re seeing that the 2022 election .. is part of a continuing engagement among Generation Z and millennials,” said Abby Kiesa, deputy director of CIRCLE, which is housed within Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life.
Young voters went heavily for Democrats (63 percent of them voted for Democratic House candidates), possibly serving as the difference-makers in a number of key battleground elections.
In those states – Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – the youth turnout was higher, reaching an aggregate of 31 percent. (Arizona was excluded from this subset because not enough data was available.)
“Young people's strength in numbers led to powerful influences in key races around the country,” Kiesa said.
For example, 70 percent of young voters cast ballots for Democrat John Fetterman, who narrowly defeated Republican Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s Senate race. Voters a little older (ages 30-44) gave Fetterman 55 percent of their ballots, while voters older than 45 mostly preferred Oz.
Earlier in the cycle, CIRCLE had determined which races youth voters could most heavily influence. Topping that list was the contest for governor of Wisconsin, where Democrat Tony Evers was seeking reelection. Evers defeated Republican Tim Michels by less than 4 percentage points. Again, older voters preferred Michael, but Evers won 70 percent of the 18-29 vote.
In North Carolina, where Republican Ted Budd won a narrow Senate victory over Democrat Cheri Beasley, the youth vote was more evenly distributed (52 percent for Beasley and 44 percent for Budd, accounting for 14 percent of all voters).
According to Kiesa, 8.3 million people turned 18 and became eligible to vote between the 2020 and 2022 elections, and 46 percent of them were people of color.
“They are trying to figure out this election system with less experience in systems of power,” Kiesa said.
CIRCLE also found that the partisan split among young voters (63 percent for Democrats, 35 percent for Republicans) was about the same as in 2020, when comparing votes for House candidates but the gap was slightly narrower than the last midterm elections (67/32 in 2018). Those midterms, following the election of Donald Trump, saw a big jump in the partisan divide compared to most prior elections of the past three decades. For example, in 2016 youth voters were split 55/40.
While young people supported Democrats regardless of the voters’ race, that support was strong among people of color: 89 percent of young Black voters supported Democratic House candidates, compared to 68 percent of young Hispanic voters and 58 percent of young white voters.
This is a change from 1998-2014, when young white people mostly voted for Republicans, according to CIRCLE Director Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg.
“We think that’s partially related to the issues,” she said, pointing to gun violence in 2018 following the Parkland, Fla., school shooting and abortion rights this year. “Issues always drag young people to the polls.”
Young people are increasing their political activism beyond voting at a higher rate, according to CIRCLE. Researchers have seen increases in members of Gen Z and millennials encouraging others to vote, donating money to political campaigns, attending demonstrations, convincing others to register to vote and volunteering on campaigns.
“There is a continuation of a trend of engagement extending beyond the ballot box,” said CIRCLE’s election coordinator Ruby Belle Booth.
CIRCLE calculated the “day after” voter estimates by analyzing vote totals, the National Election Pool Survey’s data on youth voters and Census Bureau data.
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.