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In bygone days, Democrats in New York's suburbs could happily vote for Republicans they deemed good guys. Moderate Republicans didn't seem all that different from moderate Democrats, and the two parties worked together in Washington.

Those days are obviously gone.

Democrats are rightfully ecstatic that they won two of the three 2019 elections for governor in deep red Southern states, overcoming relentless campaign visits by President Donald Trump. But in truth, their twin triumphs had less to do with Trump and more to do with GOP Gov. Matt Bevin's toxicity in Kentucky and Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards's popularity in Louisiana.

Edwards and Democratic Gov.-elect Andy Beshear ran well ahead of Hillary Clinton's 2016 support virtually everywhere in their states. But the results also reaffirmed where Democrats' true opportunity lies in 2020: suburbs with lots of college-educated whites.

Within the suburbs, journalists have argued that women “are seen as the most prized and persuadable bloc” because they have demonstrated a willingness to shift parties depending on the issues. Right now, downturns in the economy and abortion bans are competing for their attention.

But politicians pandering to suburban women need to make sure they aren’t making the wrong assumptions about them. Too often terms like “suburban women” and “soccer moms” are stand-ins for “white women.” The reality is that the suburbs are diversifying and it is a broad range of suburban voters who will decide the outcome of the midterms.

Our analysis of youth voter turnout nationwide finds wide variation between states and underscores the importance of electoral laws and policies that help grow voters. We estimate that 50% of young people, ages 18-29, voted in the 2020 presidential election, a remarkable 11-point increase from 2016 (39%) and likely one of the highest rates of youth electoral participation since the voting age was lowered to 18. Our new estimate is based on newly available voter file data in 41 states—AK, DC, HI, MD, MS, NH, ND, UT, WI, WY do not have reliable vote history data by age. This analysis replaces our earlier estimate, released immediately after Election Day, which estimated a 5 to 11 point increase in youth voter turnout compared to 2016 based on data available in that moment. In recent weeks, we released youth voter turnout in all available states by region: West/Southwest, South, Midwest, and East/Northeast. Those analyses offer more details on several notable states and have now been updated with the latest data. Our estimates of youth voter turnout rates in more than 80% of states are in some ways a tribute to young people’s commitment to political engagement and action in 2020, and their impressive ability to navigate a changing electoral landscape during a global pandemic. The data also allows us to zoom out, look at trends in youth voter participation, and draw some conclusions about what is and isn’t working to broaden and diversify the youth electorate. We pay special attention to laws and election administration policies that affect the ease of casting a ballot in each state—from voter registration to vote-by-mail, which can always impact youth voter turnout but may have had especially large effects in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic shifted election processes across the country. [Graph Omitted] Youth Voting Increased Across the Country Half of eligible young voters cast a ballot in 2020. However, as is the case in every election cycle, youth voter turnout rates varied widely across the country: New Jersey (67%), Minnesota (65%), Colorado (64%) and Maine (61%) had the highest statewide youth turnout rates, while South Dakota (32%), Oklahoma (34%), Arkansas (35%), and New Mexico (39%) had the lowest. Numerous interconnected factors shape whether youth electoral participation is high or low. These include the competitiveness of elections, how much (or how little) campaigns and organizations reach out to young people, the state’s civic culture and civic education policies, the demographic composition of the youth population, and state voting laws—which are discussed in greater detail below—that can either facilitate voting or pose barriers for youth. Because there’s no single reason why youth voter turnout may be high or low in a state, and no silver bullet if it’s the latter, it is crucial to examine these and other factors that may be at play in order to expand the electorate. Turnout in 2020 was much higher than in 2016, when we estimate (using the same methodology) that 39% of young people cast a ballot. This sizable, 11-point increase builds on young people’s momentum from 2018, when youth turnout was record-setting for a midterm year. State-by-state turnout increases between 2016 and 2020 were 9 percentage points on average, but also varied widely. The largest increases in youth voter turnout were in New Jersey (+22), Arizona (+18), and California and Washington (both +17). Notably, with the exception of Arizona, all of those states automatically mailed absentee ballots to all registered voters without voters having to request them. No states saw a decrease in turnout, and in only one state (Louisiana) did the youth voter turnout rate remain flat, at 42%, between 2016 and 2020. Turnout of Newly Eligible Voters Stronger, but Still Lagging We also estimate that voter turnout among young people ages 18-19 was 46%. This age group deserves special attention because they are the newest eligible voters, so their electoral participation, or lack thereof can provide a window into how well—and how equitably—we are preparing and priming youth to participate in democracy. Additionally, voting is a habit that, when formed and practiced early, is likeliest to persist later in life. But, by the same token, when preparation for voting is inequitable early in life, those inequities can also persist. Historically, youth ages 18-19 have voted at lower rates than their slightly older peers, and that was once again the case in 2020. However, some states managed to close the gap; in California and Washington, remarkably, voter turnout was actually higher among youth ages 18-19. But in still other states the difference was stark: in South Dakota, where 32% of young people under 30 voted, just 12% of 18- and 19-year-olds cast a ballot. As we mark the 50-year anniversary of the 26th amendment that lowered the voting age to 18, these voter turnout differences by age are a reminder that challenges to achieving equitable participation remain. They also point to the importance of a Growing Voters framework that focuses on how the education system, election administrators, and other stakeholders can ensure that we start preparing young people to vote long before they turn 18.

It is also the sort of threat that comes up regularly in every even-numbered year of late, as organizations focused on increasing turnout among younger voters insist on touting their own power. That insistence overlaps with the sense of frustration younger Americans feel about being boxed out of positions of power by older people (something about which I’ve written a book). There’s a demand for framing young people as determinative in elections and plenty of organizations willing to leverage that demand. But are they actually determinative? Have youth voting patterns changed in either turnout or in partisanship? It is the case that turnout among voters under 30 has increased in the past few cycles. Estimates from the University of Florida’s Michael McDonald show that 2020 and 2018 each saw unusually high turnout among those youngest voters. We often point to 2008 as an election in which young people played a significant role, but turnout among young voters in 2020 was higher than in the election that brought Barack Obama to power.

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For the first time, the vaunted senior bloc of voters -a rapidly growing group now accounting for 19 percent of the American electorate -favored the losing candidate in the presidential election, John McCain. Previously, seniors had always picked the winner. But as in all things political, the public needs to take a closer look before jumping to conclusions about the power of senior voters and the presumed conservatism -even racism -of the older generation. “Assumptions that older persons vote as a ‘benefits bloc’ are wrong -up to now,” stated political scientist Robert Binstock, professor of aging, health and society at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Binstock, coauthor of Aging Nation: The Economics and Politics of Growing Old in America, addressed the myth of the senior voting bloc at the November meeting of the Gerontological Society of America in Washington, D.C. “For now, the elderly are as diverse in politics as they are in almost every other social sphere.” Yet, he said, images of “greedy geezers” and, increasingly, the “me-generation” of aging boomers persist in mainstream media, usually promoted by conservative groups opposed to such programs as Social Security and Medicare. To be sure, the nationwide vote of people 60 or older opposed the first major nonwhite presidential nominee in U.S. history. McCain pulled 51 percent of older voters to 47 percent for Barack Obama. However, this result was skewed by the heavy white vote in the deep southern and Appalachian states. According to The New York Times, “Less than a third of Southern whites voted for Mr. Obama, compared with 43 percent of whites nationally.” There’s a good bet that the 60-plus vote favored Obama outside of the South, said University of South Florida political analyst Susan A. MacManus, author of Targeting Senior Voters. She noted that exit polls in predominantly Democratic states showed “a majority of 65-plus voters supported Obama.” Examples of the Obama majority were Hawaii (69 percent), Minnesota (55 percent) and Oregon (56 percent). These geographic differences point to the complications of age-based electoral analyses. Politicians keen on cornering the senior vote or the coveted motherload of aging boomers – the largest generation in history at 78 million strong in the United States -are sure to find that appeals based on “entitlement reform” may not alone tap the golden-years vote. To be successful, these issues have always depended on cross-generational support. For instance, it wasn’t only older people who stopped President Bush’s initiative to partially privatize Social Security four years ago. The opposition to that plan sliced across every age group. Although seniors, and those now reaching their later years, have palpable social and political concerns, Binstock emphasized that the very nature of age brackets scatters older people across American space and time. Besides geography, he said, “Older voters will show signs of cohort and period effects.” Seniors now aged 65-69 grew up in the Eisenhower ’50s, when post-war America was thriving and business was booming. Those now ages 60-64 spent their formative years in the Kennedy-Johnson period that promised a moon-shot future and churned with social turmoil. Color and culture also break down the fictional senior-benefits bloc. According to 2008 exit polls, minority elders generally echoed others like them across the age span. For example, Binstock said, while 95 percent of young African Americans (ages 18-29) cast their votes for Obama in exit polls, 94 percent of black voters 65-plus also went for the man from Illinois. Meanwhile, older Latinos gave Obama an 86 percent margin, versus younger Latinos’ 76 percent. What about the jumbo boomer generation, those from their early 40s to early 60s? Nationally boomers of all shades split their votes evenly, giving 49 percent to each candidate. But adding other factors reveal important group differences. Exit polls, for example, show that the biggest increase among African American voters came from the boomers. Their turnout jumped from 3 percent in 2004 to 4 percent in 2008, said David Bositis, senior analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C., and a respected authority on the African American electorate.

Last week’s presidential debate put the age issue front and center in the U.S. campaign. But there is a different age issue playing out across many Western democracies: a growing bloc of older voters demanding that their needs be met. Older voters loom large in elections this year in the U.S., U.K. and France. Not only do they turn out to vote more reliably than the young, but they also account for a growing share of the electorate. As a result, leading political parties in many countries are pledging to protect retirees’ income and health coverage, at a time when growing numbers of retirees will strain government finances. Older voters often are more concerned than younger ones about crime and immigration, and less likely to support environmental initiatives. In the run-up to Britain’s election on Thursday, every major party backed the country’s “triple lock” guarantee for retirees, which ensures that their state pensions—the British equivalent of Social Security payments—will outpace inflation over the long term. Last year, such pensions rose 10.1%, while the median wage for workers ages 19 to 49 rose by 5.7%. This year, pensioners are set to get another 8.1% bump. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, trailing in the polls, is promising retirees a tax break, too. For young people, he has proposed a mandatory national service for 18-year-olds—either a year in the military or volunteer work. That plan is deeply unpopular with the young but plays well with those over 55. In the current U.S. election cycle, voters appear more concerned about the age of the candidates than whether their policies favor the old. President Biden, who stumbled badly in last week’s debate, is 81, and presumed Republican candidate Donald Trump is 78. As for Congress, the median age of senators at the beginning of this Congress was 65.3, a point at which people are eligible for Medicare, according to Pew Research Center. “When you’re watching a debate and you see that both of the candidates that are for the primary parties in our country are not going to be here to see the effects of climate change come out, of course that’s not going to be the priority for them,” said Daphne Gould, a 27-year-old flight attendant in Atlanta who said she supports Democrats because of that issue. Old people have long punched above their weight politically because they vote proportionally more than the young. In the 2022 U.S. midterm election, about two-thirds of citizens 65 and over voted, more than double the turnout rate for people 18 to 29, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of census data. [Graph Omitted] Demographic change and increases in longevity mean older voters are going to make up an ever larger share of the electorate in many nations. The Netherlands, Norway and Croatia are just some of the European countries where there are now political parties whose main goal is to champion the interests of retirees. In Britain, in the early 1980s, there were nearly twice as many registered voters under 40 as over 60. Now, the over-60s have almost caught up. But given that they vote more reliably, there are now 1.3 ballots cast by the over-60s for every ballot by under-40s, according to Zack Grant, a researcher at the Nuffield Politics Research Centre at Oxford University who analyzed British election data. The ballot-box power of the over-60s surpassed that of the under-40s a few years before the triple-lock guarantee was introduced in 2010. By 2028, total spending on state pensions is projected to outstrip spending on defense, education and policing combined, according to UKOnward, a London think tank. “Our country is tilted to favor the old over the young,” said David Willetts, a former cabinet minister who was part of the Conservative government that implemented the triple lock, a policy he opposed. “Older people…have the money and the power.” Older voters alone can’t decide elections. Sunak’s party is expected to lose despite overwhelming support from older voters. The Labour Party, widely expected to win the election, wants to lower the voting age to 16, partly to offset the growing clout of older voters. Germany recently lowered its voting age to 16. Going against the interests of older voters can be politically costly. In France, a move last year by President Emmanuel Macron to raise the country’s retirement age by two years, to 64, sparked months of protests by old and young people alike. Lawmakers refused to pass the bill, forcing Macron to use constitutional powers to make the change without a vote. Macron’s popularity took a hit, and his party came in third place in Sunday’s first round of voting for parliamentary elections. The first two place finishers, the far-right National Rally and a coalition of leftist parties called the New Popular Front, both opposed the pension changes. The New Popular Front wants to lower the retirement age to 60. Older voters sometimes favor policies that aren’t in young people’s interests. In 2016, British voters under 35 voted by almost 2-to-1 to remain in the European Union, while voters over 55 strongly favored leaving. Now, the U.K. economy is 5% smaller than it would have been if Brexit hadn’t passed, Goldman Sachs estimates. “It’s a given that if you’re young, you have less influence,” said Samuel Thomson, a 34-year-old video producer in London. Even young politicians such as Sunak, who is 44, seem to focus far more on older voters, Thomson said. As baby boomers retire, their pensions and healthcare are accounting for a larger percentage of government spending. Over the past 15 years in Britain, government healthcare spending rose to the equivalent of 7% of gross domestic product, from 6%, while education spending slipped to 4%, from 6%. In the U.S., the cost of Social Security and Medicare is projected to rise to the equivalent of 10.2% of economic output in a decade, up from 8.3% today, according to the Congressional Budget Office. By 2054, according to CBO, spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for people 65 and older is projected to account for more than half of the federal government’s noninterest spending. At that point, 25% of the U.S. population will be receiving Social Security benefits, up from 20% today. “Younger voters who are going to be stuck with the bill aren’t really paying attention to it,” said Brian Riedl, a former Republican Senate aide now at the conservative Manhattan Institute. “So older voters are going to the polls and essentially robbing younger voters.” Social Security’s costs already exceed its revenues, and in about 10 years, politically toxic automatic benefit cuts will kick in unless Congress acts to fill the gap with options such as higher taxes, transfers from the general fund or borrowing. A decade ago, Republicans regularly offered plans that would curb Social Security and Medicare benefits for future retirees, which they said would make the programs smaller but more sustainable. In his successful 2016 campaign, Trump promised not to reduce benefits—co-opting a traditional Democratic stance—and he is sticking to that position in the current campaign. During Trump’s first term, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plans for reducing projected Medicare spending went nowhere.

It is easy to lose sight of how unusual the 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be. It is unusual, most obviously, in that it features the same two major-party candidates who were on the ballot four years ago. It is unusual in that both candidates are broadly unpopular, something that seems standard in the modern era but is itself anomalous. And it is unusual in that it arrives at a moment of generational transition in the United States. And that transition — heavily though by no mean entirely — can help us understand how the presidential race and American politics broadly are evolving. The prompt for this discussion is new data from Pew Research Center exploring partisan identity among demographic groups. But let’s begin not by diving into party identification among younger and older people or among men and women. Let’s instead look at a much less common metric: housing. In Pew’s data, people who own their homes are slightly more likely to identify as Republicans (or Republican-leaning independents) than as Democrats. It’s a six-point difference, with 51 percent of homeowners saying they are Republican or Republican leaners. Among renters, though, there’s a 2-to-1 advantage toward Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. In total, the difference in partisan identity between homeowners and renters is 38 points: homeowners are Republicans plus-6 and renters are Democrats plus-32.

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Older voters overwhelmingly identify with a party; among younger voters, substantial numbers lean In addition to the differences in the overall partisan tilt of younger and older voters, younger voters are considerably more likely than older voters to opt out of identifying directly with a party. For instance, among voters 80 and older, 77% identify with a party (49% as Republicans, 28% as Democrats). About two-in-ten instead say they are “something else” or independent, with most of them leaning to one of the parties. By comparison, only about half (52%) of voters under 25 identify directly with a party (38% Democrat, 14% Republican). About half instead say they are something else or independent, with 28% leaning Democratic and 20% leaning Republican. Partisanship among men and women within age groups The age differences in partisanship seen in the public overall are evident among both men and women. For instance, both men and women under 30 align with Democrats by about a two-to-one margin. Men and women voters ages 30 to 49 are fairly divided in their partisan allegiances, though the Democratic Party holds a modest edge among women in this age group. Republicans have a substantial advantage among men 50 and older, while women this age are about equally likely to affiliate with each of the two parties. Race, age and partisanship Among White, Hispanic and Asian voters, older adults today are generally more Republican (and less Democratic) than younger adults. But this is not the case for Black voters: 17% of Black voters under 50 identify as or lean Republican, compared with just 7% of Black voters 50 and older. In surveys dating back to the 1990s, younger Black voters consistently have either been somewhat more Republican than older Black voters (as in 1999, when 15% of those under 50 were or leaned Republican vs. 8% of those 50 and older), or there has been no difference in Black partisanship by age.

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In the past decade, young people have risen to the forefront of civic and political life in the United States. They have led major movements for action on issues like gun violence, climate, and racial justice. They have voted at historic rates compared to youth in previous decades, and their choices on the ballot have influenced key elections. In 2024, Gen Z youth alone will make up over 40 million potential voters—including 8 million youth who will have newly reached voting age since 2022—making up nearly one fifth of the American electorate. Together with the youngest Millennials, young people ages 18-34 are poised to be a potential force in the next presidential election. But young people are also living through trying times in their personal lives, for our country, and around the world that make their continued civic participation far from guaranteed. The nation’s economy, while strong by some accounts, has nonetheless left many young people concerned about jobs, the cost of living, and their financial situation. A mental health crisis affects many young people’s ability and desire to vote and engage in their communities. And many are looking ahead (though not necessarily looking forward) to a potential presidential rematch in 2024 between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump—two candidates that have not often garnered young people’s approval and enthusiasm. The CIRCLE Pre-2024 Election Youth Survey provides key insights on these questions early on in the election cycle, when there is still time for campaigns and communities to take action, invest in young people, and address their needs. Crucially, it highlights critical differences by race, education and rurality that shape the political views and engagement of the most diverse generations in American history. This initial analysis from our nationally representative poll of youth ages 18-34 reveals major trends about youth, including: A majority say they’re very likely to vote in 2024, though groups like Black youth and youth without college experience, who are getting less information about the election and support to participate, are less likely to say they’ll cast a ballot. Youth overall prefer a Democratic candidate by a double-digit margin, but nearly a third are undecided and some groups of youth favor a GOP nominee. Issues like climate change and gun violence remain at the center of youth engagement with politics and elections, but the cost of living is, by a wide margin, young people’s top concern.

Students were dancing in the aisles and their seats in the Hampton University auditorium long before Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage for the first stop of her fall college tour. Jaden Clemons and Layth Carpenter, both 18-year-old freshmen, said they viewed Harris as “authentic” and “relatable” as the alum of Howard University, another historically Black school. But neither was ready to commit to supporting Harris and Joe Biden next year, the first time they will be eligible to vote in a presidential election. And when it comes to lining up behind Democrats or Republicans, Clemons said, “We don’t even feel like it’s something that we need to choose.” Getting students like these two off the sidelines is one of the top challenges for the White House as Biden seeks a second term as the oldest president in American history, and it’s one that Harris will confront as she crisscrosses between campuses in the coming weeks. Although young people lean left, they're less likely to vote, and preventing them from tuning out is crucial in close campaigns that hinge on narrow margins. And Biden isn’t the only candidate trying to line up support among young voters. Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in his comeback bid for the White House, visited Iowa State University last weekend. He tossed autographed footballs into a cheering crowd during a cookout at Alpha Gamma Rho, an agricultural studies fraternity, and then attended the football game against in-state rival University of Iowa. “I guess the youth likes Trump," he said. John Brabender, a media consultant for the Trump campaign, said the former president tries to show up at events that lead to video on social media — for example, Trump’s appearance at a mixed martial arts fight in Las Vegas in July. Since YouTube and TikTok are crucial platforms for young people, he said, "Our goal is to make sure content is created in an interesting enough way that it does get shared. Drawing the attention of young people can be difficult, but Trump’s celebrity remains powerful. One of the few things that Isaac Gavin, a 21-year-old senior at Drake University in Des Moines, knows about the Republican primary is that Trump is a candidate again. “I don’t even know all who is running. It seems like so many,” he said. “It’s confusing.” Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican who announced his retirement this week, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol that he doubted Trump could make inroads with a new generation. “My party is only going to be successful getting young people to vote for us if we’re talking about the future,” he said. “And that’s not happening so far.” Biden won 61% of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, making young voters a critical part of his coalition. However, his approval ratings within that age group now stand at 29% compared to 40% overall, according to a new AP-NORC poll. At Hampton, Harris said there was too much at stake — abortion, voting rights, gun control — for students to miss their shot to shape the country’s future. “What concerns me sometimes is that our young leaders will be told that their vote doesn’t matter,” she told the audience. “It’s because you voted,” Harris added, “that Joe Biden is president and I’m vice president of the United States.” Harris' college tour — with another stop Friday at North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, N.C. — is one part of a broader strategy. The White House has worked with online influencers to reach people who don't rely on traditional media. The Democratic National Committee is also building a network of student volunteers to organize on college campuses, and they flew banners over football games to urge voter registration. “As Democrats did in 2020 and 2022, we will meet younger Americans where they are and turn their energy into action as part of our winning 2024 coalition,” said Kevin Munoz, a Biden campaign spokesman. Given the liberal bent of younger voters, Democrats’ competition isn’t always Republicans but apathy or the lure of a third party. John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, said the White House will need to break through to people who tend to tune out when it comes to politics so they’re aware of what Biden has accomplished since taking office. “It’s just an incredibly challenging environment to communicate that message,” said Della Volpe, who worked on Biden’s campaign in 2020. “And unless those things are understood, cynicism grows.” Destiny Humphreys, a 22-year-old senior at South Carolina State University, said she fears that politicians always say they’ll “listen to the people” only to backtrack once they’re in a position of power. “Everybody keeps saying the same thing just in different ways but ultimately, they’re not listening to the people,” she said. On Thursday, Harris repeatedly tried to demonstrate that she understood young voters’ concerns. She said they had taught her about “climate anxiety” and their fears of a warming world. At another point, she asked how many students had participated in active shooter drills in their schools, and a sea of hands went up. Older people, Harris said, “don’t get it.” Harris acknowledged that the White House has faced roadblocks, such as the U.S. Supreme Court decision that undermined its debt forgiveness plan. But she said she wouldn’t stop fighting for the administration’s agenda. “I like to say, I eat ‘no’ for breakfast,” she said. “I don’t hear ‘no.’” Harris ended with a pitch for help. “With each generation, we must fight for our rights and our freedoms,” she said. “And so, just stay active. Because I and your country are counting on you.” After the event, Carpenter said she felt that Harris sort of “danced around” students' questions and blamed problems on Congress. But Clemons might have been won over. Biden and Harris are “strong candidates, in my eyes,” he said, “mainly because of what I saw today.”

CIRCLE’s exclusive analysis of youth votes cast and vote choice in major electoral battlegrounds shows that young people had a decisive impact in races across the country, notably in sunbelt states from Georgia to Arizona, and in the upper Midwest like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. We find: Young voters provided approximately 3 times the margin of victory in the razor-thin Nevada Senate race between Catherine Cortez-Masto and Adam Laxalt. In the Arizona governor’s race, where Democrat Katie Hobbs is projected to win by 20,000 votes, young people provided a net of 60,000 votes toward her over Republican Kari Lake. In the U.S. Senate race which is going to a December recount, young people contributed 116,000 net votes to Raphael Warnock, who garnered just 35,000 votes more than Herschel Walker in a race headed to a runoff. Young people contributed a significant portion of John Fetterman’s margin over Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, where they netted Fetterman 120,000 votes and his margin of victory was roughly 190,000. Young voters were pivotal in the Wisconsin Governor race, where they cast a net 79,000 voters for Governor Tony Evers, who defeated Tim Michels by a mere 89,000 votes. [Graph Omitted] How Youth Swing Elections: “Net” Votes for Winner vs. Margin of Victory Young people’s voices and votes matter in every single state and race across the country. However, in close elections decided by just a few percentage points, young voters can be more than influential: because of their often vastly different vote choice compared to older voters, they can be decisive. Before the election, CIRCLE’s Youth Electoral Significance Index ranked the races where youth had the highest potential to help decide election results. Our analysis of estimated votes cast by youth reveals that young people cast many times more votes than the margin of victory in major 2022 battlegrounds. Because of their strong preference for Democratic candidates in those races, youth gave these candidates their strongest base of support and a number of “net” votes that far exceeds the final difference in each race. [Graph Omitted] More on some of the key races where youth had impact below: Arizona Arizona is nearly finished tallying their ballots for the closely watched contests for Governor and U.S. Senate. On November 14, the Governor’s race was called for Democrat Katie Hobbs by just under 20,000 votes. Young people in Arizona favored Hobbs by a 20-point margin, yielding over 60,000 votes for Hobbs, over three times the winning margin of victory. Youth also played a factor in Democrat Mark Kelly’s victory over Republican Blake Masters in the U.S. Senate race. Nevada Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez-Masto was declared the winner over Republican Adam Laxalt, winning reelection by under 8,000 votes. This made Cortez-Masto the 50th Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate for the next term, assuring Democratic control of the chamber. Young people in Nevada preferred Cortez-Masto by 21 points over her opponent, meaning that young people accounted for a net 27,000 votes to propel her to victory. In the Governor’s race, the Republican Joe Lombardo came out on top and fared slightly better with young voters. Georgia For the second straight election cycle, the Georgia race for U.S. Senate will once again head to a runoff. Before the election, we had ranked it as the #1 Senate race in the country where youth could influence the result, and they accounted for an above-average 14% of the votes according to the AP VoteCast exit poll. As of Wednesday evening, incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock was leading Republican Hershel Walker by 35,000 votes. Young people favored Warnock 59% to 38%, while voters ages 30-44 backed Warnock by a smaller margin and older voters preferred Walker%. In the Governor’s race, young people also provided strong support for Democrat Stacey Abrams, who was defeated by Brian Kemp. Pennsylvania In the closely watched Pennsylvania Senate race, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman narrowly beat Dr. Mehmet Oz by 2.5 points. While the youth share of the vote in the state mirrored the national average, Keystone State youth favored Fetterman by 19 points, contributing 120,000 net votes to Fetterman’s 185,000-vote victory. Young people favored Pennsylvania Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro by an even larger margin—26 points—over Doug Mastriano, contributing to Shapiro’s victory. Both races ranked highly in our index of projected youth impact. Wisconsin As it has in previous cycles, Wisconsin elections were close at multiple levels of the ballot. Young voters were pivotal in Wisconsin, who cast a net 79,000 votes for Democratic Governor Tony Evers, who defeated Republican Tim Michels by a mere 89,000 votes. That Wisconsin Governor race was #1 in our ranking of potential youth influence. Young voters also favored Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes by 19 points (whereas voters aged 30-44 only favored Barnes by 6 points), helping him remain competitive with incumbent Republican Ron Johnson who won a very narrow race. Kansas Registrations among 18-24 year olds in Kansas far exceeded their registration rates in 2018, in part due to mobilization around the abortion ballot measure that was included in their August primary. Young people answered questions about if they would show up with the same energy in the general with strong, influential support for Democrat Laura Kelly over her Republican opponent Derek Schmidt. Young voters made up 14% of the electorate, higher than the national average, and supported Kelly by 11 points, casting 11,000 net votes which bolstered her to a 15,000 vote victory. Youth were also influential in states where Republicans came out on top. That includes Florida, where according to AP VoteCast young voters preferred Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio, and North Carolina, where youth cast many times more total votes than the margin of victory even as their preferred candidate did not ultimately prevail—underscoring that investing in outreach that may increase youth participation by just a few percentage points can swing electoral outcomes.

House Republican leaders unveiled their high-tech agenda Wednesday with a list of items they say would boost economic growth and eliminate barriers to innovation. Included on the House Republican High-Tech Working Group's list of goals is ensuring employee stock options, extending the research and development tax credit, improving technology worker skills, patent reform, protecting intellectual property from digital piracy, telecommunications reform and promoting health industry information technology. The group also said it wants to pass legislation to curb the use of spyware, software secretly installed on a computer to track a user's activities, and the practice of phishing, which involves the use of official-looking but phony e-mails and Web sites. "Republicans get it when it comes to technology," said working group Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., at a press conference at the Capitol. Goodlatte was joined by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and other Republican leaders. "House Republicans are doing everything we can to reduce hurdles," said Hastert to an audience heavily populated with high-tech industry lobbyists. DeLay bashed Democrats as "still stuck in the past" when it comes to technology. "They pay lip service but have no agenda," he said.

We examined several major platforms that are key portals to news today: Facebook, Google (Search), Google News, Twitter, and YouTube. Some of these services offer multiple ways of accessing content, but we chose to focus on search-based news discovery. We were particularly interested in the top results, since users are most likely to interact with them.

First, we wanted to understand the news diets that individual participants were offered. Are users being given results that appear to be personalized to their political preferences and social characteristics?

Most tech companies strive to be politically neutral — Google, Facebook and Twitter all have political action committees that tend to donate evenly to Republicans and Democrats. Yet they’re still struggling to counter allegations of bias.

Part of the blame lies with the companies, which are consistently opaque about how their services work. This can leave users to invent conspiratorial explanations for how the companies work.

The headaches facing the tech industry's giants won't change much whether Donald Trump remains in the White House or Joe Biden takes his place.

The big picture: Individuals in tech are as passionate and fingernail-biting about Tuesday's election as any other Americans. But the path ahead for the massive companies that have seized the industry's reins over the past decade will only alter incrementally based on the polls' outcome.

The internet giants of our time have made it clear where their loyalties lie in the 2024 presidential election. Hint: They’re definitely not with former President Donald Trump.

The social media behemoth TikTok has taken the world by storm over the past few years. It has since been riddled with countless major controversies, such as its partial ownership by the Chinese government and its biased suppression of certain types of content over others. That trend continues as TikTok announced its “election integrity” initiative on Thursday.

Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel may be backing Donald Trump, and even speaking at the Republican National Convention. But many other technology leaders have come out strongly opposed to a Trump presidency.

On Thursday morning, 145 technology CEOs, billionaire investors, and upcoming entrepreneurs from some of the largest companies and startups in Silicon Valley signed an open letter that condemned Trump as "a disaster for innovation." The list includes Slack's Stewart Butterfield, IAC's Barry Diller, Qualcomm's Irwin Jacobs, Tumblr's David Karp, Box's Aaron Levie, Facebook's Dustin Moskovitz, Reddit's Alexis Ohanian, eBay's Pierre Omidyar, Zynga's Mark Pincus, Medium's Ev Williams, Apple's Steve Wozniak, and venture capitalists Vinod Khosla and Chris Sacca.

Facebook and Twitter employees have donated $2.7million to Democrats so far in 2020, ten times the amount they've given to Republicans. Data harvested by OpenSecrets.org revealed that of the $2.9million staff have donated to political campaigns and PACs this year, ninety percent went to Democrats and only $222,000 went to Republicans. It's unclear how many donations have been made and how they vary in size. At Twitter, 98.99 percent - $347,270 - of all employee donations to either political candidates or super PACS has been to Democrats. Staff there have given just $3,556 to Republicans. Biden has received $66,000 as an individual but the majority of the donations went to organizations. At Facebook, $2,409,464 out of $2,628,040 went to Democrats. Only $218,576 went to Republicans. Biden's campaign has received $645,152 from them. The data contributes to ongoing claims that big tech are bias towards the left and are using their power to try to silence Republicans and Donald Trump.

Big tech is the whipping boy of 2021. Sure, it deserves the lash here and there. It should be liable for defamatory content on its platforms and be held to account for online violence. Young children should be protected from business models that harm them. How to do this sensibly is the harder question. But blaming tech companies for the sickening state of public discourse is a cop-out. Fair and square, we are to blame for the vulgar, intolerant state of our public square.

After the death of British Conservative MP David Amess we should demand answers to politically motivated violence directed at our elected representatives. The starting point is surely asking how a radicalised Islamist, who had allegedly been planning an attack for years, escaped the attention of the authorities charged with keeping the country safe from terrorists.