

Young Female Voters Voted Overwhelmingly for Democrats in 2022 The Democratic Advantage Among Young Voters Is True Among Key Racial and Ethnic GroupsĪlthough the impact of Millennials’ and Plurals’ preferences for Democratic candidates among racial and ethnic voters varies based on congressional district lines and the nature of each’s state’s population, when it comes to voters under 45, and particularly among female voters of that age, their presence can be felt in every precinct in the country. Eighteen to 29-year-old white voters also supported Democratic congressional candidates over Republican ones by a 58% to 40% margin, validating IOPs pre-election predictions as shown in Figure 5. Moreover, despite Republican efforts to make inroads in these communities and a large Republican vote among Hispanics in places like Florida, young minority voters supported Democrats by substantial margins. What should be of even greater concern to Republicans is that this Democratic advantage, at least in the 2022 midterm election, was particularly strong among African American and Hispanic voters under the age of 45. America’s Youngest Generations Voted Overwhelmingly Democratic for Congress in the 2022 Midterm Elections The 2022 Democratic Advantage Among Young Voters in Battleground States Allowed the Democrats to Recapture Senate ControlĪnd even though the Democrats failed to retain their majority in the House of Representatives, the preference for Democratic candidates among members of the Pluralist and Millennial generations limited the size of the new Republican majority to just five votes. Senate, as illustrated in Figures 3 and 4.

Their influence enabled the Democrats to win almost every battleground statewide contest and increase their majority in the U.S. Younger Americans are tilting the electoral playing field strongly towards the Democrats and making it very likely that the “over/under” line in American politics will be 45, if not 50, for at least the rest of this decade.įor instance, the results of the 2022 midterm elections surprised many who didn’t believe the Harvard Institute of Politics (IOP) surveys that showed young people were very enthusiastic about voting in the 2022 midterms. Republicans need to take steps now to reverse these trends among young people before they become an unbreakable barrier to GOP electoral success and Democrats need to focus on Plurals and Millennials in the years ahead to take advantage of the opportunity that this emerging majority presents.

Research on individual voting behavior over time supports the idea that early partisan predilections persist over an individual’s life span. Millennials and Plurals Will Be a Majority of Potential Voters by 2028 - Over Sixty Percent by 2036 GenerationsĪs Figure 2 illustrates, Millennials and some of their younger siblings, will be a majority of the electorate in just six years. Let’s start with the simple fact that, as Figure 1 illustrates, the Millennial generation is the largest generation in America today and the largest in American history. Younger voters should be a source of electoral strength for Democrats for some years to come. With these two generations scheduled to become a majority of the American electorate later this decade, election results and a spate of recent data from Pew research are providing an increasingly persuasive answer. Political scientists and forward-looking politicians have been debating the ultimate impact of the two youngest American generations - Plurals (Gen Z) and Millennials - on the nation’s partisan future for some time.
