Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Young voters participated in midterm elections at near record rate

Young voters in Michigan

People wait to vote at a polling location on the campus of Michigan State University on Tuesday. Nearly one-third of young people in battleground states, including Michigan, voted in the midterms.

Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

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.

Made with Flourish

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.

Read the full report.

Read More

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

The B-2 "Spirit" Stealth Bomber flys over the 136th Rose Parade Presented By Honda on Jan. 1, 2025, in Pasadena, California. (Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

After a short and successful war with Iraq, President George H.W. Bush claimed in 1991 that “the ghosts of Vietnam have been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert.” Bush was referring to what was commonly called the “Vietnam syndrome.” The idea was that the Vietnam War had so scarred the American psyche that we forever lost confidence in American power.

The elder President Bush was partially right. The first Iraq war was certainly popular. And his successor, President Clinton, used American power — in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere — with the general approval of the media and the public.

Keep ReadingShow less
Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are
a close up of a typewriter with the word conspiracy on it

Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are

The Comet Ping Pong Pizzagate shooting, the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a man’s livestreamed beheading of his father last year were all fueled by conspiracy theories. But while the headlines suggest that conspiratorial thinking is on the rise, this is not the case. Research points to no increase in conspiratorial thinking. Still, to a more dangerous reality: the conspiracies taking hold and being amplified by political ideologues are increasingly correlated with violence against particular groups. Fortunately, promising new research points to actions we can take to reduce conspiratorial thinking in communities across the US.

Some journalists claim that this is “a golden age of conspiracy theories,” and the public agrees. As of 2022, 59% of Americans think that people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories today than 25 years ago, and 73% of Americans think conspiracy theories are “out of control.” Most blame this perceived increase on the role of social media and the internet.

Keep ReadingShow less
Why a College Degree No Longer Guarantees a Good Job
woman wearing academic cap and dress selective focus photography
Photo by MD Duran on Unsplash

Why a College Degree No Longer Guarantees a Good Job

A college education used to be considered, along with homeownership, one of the key pillars of the American Dream. Is that still the case? Recent experiences of college graduates seeking employment raise questions about whether a university diploma remains the best pathway to pursuing happiness, as it once was.

Consider the case of recent grad Lohanny Santo, whose TikTok video went viral with over 3.6 million “likes” as she broke down in tears and vented her frustration over her inability to find even a minimum wage job. That was despite her dual degrees from Pace University and her ability to speak three languages. John York, a 24-year-old with a master’s degree in math from New York University, writes that “it feels like I am screaming into the void with each application I am filling out.”

Keep ReadingShow less