Old voters are key to the election – low turnout from other groups ensures it

The 2022 midterm election results made plain that the predicted “red wave”—in which Republicans were expected to win by huge margins in the House of Representatives and take over the Senate—did not occur. In fact, Democrats gained an additional Senate seat, and while Republicans took control of the House, it was by a modest nine seats rather than the 30-plus some pundits predicted. Although each state’s election results drew from different demographic components, analyses of exit polls underscored that young voters showed strong Democratic preferences, which contributed to the party’s better-than-expected performance in House, Senate, and select gubernatorial races. Strong Democratic preferences by other groups—including Black Americans, Latino or Hispanic Americans, women, and white female college graduates—also contributed. What these analyses did not provide, however, was a detailed examination of turnout rates—the percent of eligible voters who voted—associated with these groups. But now, new Census Bureau data from the Current Population Survey’s Voting and Registration supplement provides this information for the 2022 election, and can be analyzed along with a similar data product from earlier elections. Perhaps the most notable finding with respect to voter turnout is that 2022 turnout rates were nearly as high as the record-setting 2018 midterm turnout rates. Yet unlike the previous midterm elections, the groups with the highest Democratic voting margins—in particular, young people, Black Americans, women, and white female college graduates—did not show greater turnout increases than other groups, and often displayed lower turnout rates than in the 2018 midterms. These groups displayed higher turnout rates than in the low-turnout 2014 midterms, but either did not match or did not improve on their 2018 turnout levels. And only a minority of states registered turnout increases between 2018 and 2022, while an even smaller number showed increases among young and nonwhite voters. The new data also provides information on the demographics of the voting population both nationally and across states. As in the 2018 midterms, less than two-fifths of voters in the 2022 midterms were non-college-educated white voters—down from well over 40% in elections prior to 2018. The share of these voters has declined over time in almost all states, while since 2010, the share of white college graduates and nonwhite voters increased nationally and in most states. Overall, the data places a somewhat new lens on the results of last November’s midterms. The stronger-than-expected Democratic performance was largely due to the voting preferences of the party’s favored demographic blocs that turned out to vote. But the turnout rates for these blocs—while still higher than most pre-2018 elections—either declined or did not rise since the previous midterms. Overall turnout in 2022 out was high, but with unexpected shifts The national election rate (actual voters per 100 eligible voters) in 2022 was 52.2%—the second-highest that the Census Bureau has recorded for a midterm in four decades. The highest was in 2018, at 53.4%. (The 2020 presidential election, meanwhile, recorded a very high rate of 66.3%.) This, along with the fact that the 2022 midterms also saw the highest rate of voter registration recorded by the Census Bureau, suggests that the nation has entered an era of a highly energized electorate, perhaps spurred by a rising level of partisanship.

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Still, given the results of the 2022 midterms—when the “red wave” did not materialize—one might have expected that key Democratic-leaning voting groups such as young people, people of color, women, and white female college graduates would have shown bigger turnout increases than other groups. That was the case for Democratic wins in the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election. Yet an examination of 2022 turnout rates by age, sex, race, and education reveals that these groups did not show the greatest turnout increases and, in many cases, displayed lower turnout than in 2018. (See Figure 2 and downloadable Table A).

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Among broad age groups, 18- to 29-year-olds showed a noticeable decline in turnout since 2018, with the oldest group (over age 65) registering a modest gain. This is opposite of what happened between the 2014 and 2018 midterms as well as between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, when the younger group registered the largest turnout gains of all age groups. While 2022 turnout rates for 18- to 29-year-olds (as those of other groups) continued to be higher than in 2014 and several earlier midterms, the downward shift is surprising. Moreover, as in the past, older eligible voters displayed higher turnout rates overall than younger eligible voters. Because of the decline in younger turnout rates in 2022, the young-old age gap in turnout widened modestly.