Youth turnout surged across the country last fall, exceeding the voter participation gains in virtually every big and bellwether state.
The new turnout estimates for the 2018 midterm, from demographers at Tufts University, drew a direct connection between political competition and boosted turnout among voters younger than 30 – making plain that energizing the younger electorate can have a demonstrable impact on the outcome of a tight presidential contest and tossup congressional races next year.
But the research also makes clear that younger people from coast to coast get to the polls less frequently than their older voters. Nationwide, 50 percent of eligible voters turned out, the best participation in a midterm year in more than a century. But the highest youth turnout the researchers found was in Minnesota, at 44 percent.
Still, in each of the seven states with the most closely-watched Senate contests last fall, youth turnout was more than 25 percentage points higher than in the 2014 midterm.
The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts, which studies youth civic engagement, made its estimates based on voting data from 34 states, including nine of the 10 most populous (California the exception) and all but three of the states eyed as being competitive on the 2020 presidential map. (The data is not yet available from Arizona, Wisconsin or New Hampshire.)
Youth turnout increased in every state studied. And in 26 of them the increase exceeded the increase in overall voter turnout. This was true in every one of the dozen potential 2020 presidential battlegrounds for which there was data.
Six of the eight states where that did not happen are reliably Republican on the national map, which the researchers said reflected findings from last fall that the GOP did not reach out to younger voters nearly so aggressively as the Democrats did. Youth turnout gains also lagged behind the general electorate's enthusiasm in three traditionally red states — Missouri, Tennessee and Texas — that hosted marquee Senate races where Republicans triumphed despite particularly strong Democratic campaigns.
The study said these were the states where youth turnout topped 30 percent:
- Minnesota: 44 percent
- Montana: 42 percent
- Colorado: 41 percent
- Oregon: 39 percent
- Maine: 36 percent
- Iowa: 35 percent
- Washington: 35 percent
- Georgia: 33 percent
- Virginia: 33 percent
- Massachusetts: 33 percent
- Michigan: 33 percent
- Florida: 32 percent
- Connecticut: 31 percent
- Pennsylvania: 30 percent
- Missouri: 30 percent
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.