Well, here is some good news that might help to offset the propensity of Republicans to show up to vote on Election Day.
Young people, many of them young women who have registered since the Hobbs Decision gutted Roe V. Wade in June, are waiting until election days to cast their votes.
“… while polling shows an airtight margin in Tuesday’s election, it mostly fails to account for turnout: Younger voters have registered this midterm cycle at rates matching or exceeding 2018’s historic levels, and the concern among young women, specifically of having less bodily autonomy than their mothers and grandmothers, is what’s driving it.
But I’ve noticed a hesitation to recognize this potential impact. On Oct. 31, Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling tweeted: “The single largest age group registered in Georgia is the 18-24 year olds with 853,426 registered. However, only 65,605 have voted. That is 7.68% of the youngest voters voting.”
According to Tom Bonier, the CEO of the Democratic political data services firm TargetSmart, there’s a possible explanation for that gap. “Most of the pollsters have been asking ‘How do you plan to vote?’ or ‘When do you plan to vote?’ and the young voters have the highest share of saying ‘On Election Day,’” he told me. He added, “When you look at the New York 19 special election, the Kansas primary, some of these higher turnout elections we’ve had in the last couple of months, the younger voters were more likely to vote on Election Day than older voters.”
I would guess that there are a couple of factors at play here, there may be a natural preference to show up at a polling place, maybe with your friends, to cast your first vote, or it might be that young people, particularly those away from home at college, have heard reports of their ballots being rejected by local officials.
This is anecdotal, but I read a tweet this morning from a mother who’s daughter flew from Hawaii to Texas to vote in person for Beto because her absentee ballot had been rejected.
That’s dedication!
Back to the article:
“A recent Harvard Institute of Politics poll found that youth voters are even more likely to vote than the national average. “Battleground state polling is far from settled, I’m not sure if we will see a Red Wave or Blue Wave on November 8 — but we will see a Gen Z Wave,” institute polling director John Della Volpe said in an email.
While the poll notably found that youth voter turnout is set to match or exceed 2018’s record-breaking levels and that these voters prefer Democratic control of Congress 57% to 31%, what most intrigued me was a stat that comported with the voter registration data: The Democratic margin of young women ages 18 to 29 who say they’re likely to vote jumped 9 points from the spring until now. And the most important issue to a plurality of these voters? Abortion.”
Here’s hoping that there are enough of these young voters, who, in large measure do not answer their phones for rando numbers from pollsters to lead Dems to victory in close districts and states.
And, according to Nate Cohn at The NY Times some of those districts and states may not be as close as we have been led to believe:
“But in one important respect, this average is very different from polling averages you’ve seen in prior years: The pollsters making up the average are very different.
Many stalwarts of political polling over the last decade — Monmouth University, Quinnipiac University, ABC/Washington Post, CNN/SSRS, Fox News, New York Times/Siena College, Marist College — have conducted far fewer surveys, especially in the battleground states, than they have in recent years. In some cases, these pollsters have conducted no recent polls at all.
And on the flip side, there has been a wave of polls by firms like the Trafalgar Group, Rasmussen Reports, Insider Advantage and others that have tended to produce much more Republican-friendly results than the traditional pollsters. None adhere to industry standards for transparency or data collection. In some states, nearly all of the recent polls were conducted by Republican-leaning firms.”
In any case, the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day!
Damn the polls and get out to vote, if you haven’t already… and make sure all the new young voters you know show up too!
my gen z daughter voted early.
I suspect the school shootings are making gun control as big of an issue as abortion to the younger crowd. Not to mention the environment. I hope they’re fired up and turn out to vote.
Hey young folks…either you vote or the world you will inherit will be a living hell. Up to you!!!
My gen Z daughter insists on voting on Election Day.
This old fart gets it. Back in 1976, in my small home town it took longer to mark all the stuff on that HUGE paper ballot (punch cards didn’t come there until 1980) that to get signed in and into a voting booth. On election day. (my very first vote was for Jimmy Carter! Cool!) Back then of course there was no early voting and one had to prove either being out of state on election day or a legitimate (almost always medical) reason to obtain an absentee ballot. But the point is I’d have waited hours to be able to experience going into a voting booth and casting my ballot in my first election! If that’s the driving sentiment for these voters as I said I get it. Everyone deserves that thrill.
One other thing comes to mind. What if young voters loosely and quietly decided to fuck with the GOP? Much is made of how Democrats rack up big numbers in early voting but GOP voters win the turnout on election day. And given the setup the GOP has so publicly gone all-in on about trying the same stunt as 2020 as in leading in election day returns and then claiming all the mail-in/absentee ballots are “fraudulent” to bolster their bullshit narrative I wonder. Could it be younger voters have been making the choice to flip the script on the GOP? To make late evening election returns NOT in favor of the GOP but Democrats leading or way too close to call?
I think it would be funny as hell to see Republicans with egg on their faces on election night, robbed of the “we’re leading so it’s over” strategy!
I wonder myself. They did sell out that Tulsa rally with no intention to attend in 2020.