Exit polls suggest Gen Z may have helped stop Republican red wave in U.S. midterms
CBC
The predicted Republican red wave of victories that failed to materialize in the U.S. midterm elections could have been impacted by young voters who, some analysts say, may have made a significant difference in key races.
"I'd say young people were definitely influential in preventing that wave," said Ruby Belle Booth, elections coordinator for the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).
CIRCLE is an independent research organization at Tufts University which focuses on youth civic engagement and conducts extensive research on youth participation.
"I don't think we can say young people are the only reason," she said. "But I think that young people absolutely did have a role in preventing that red wave from materializing as it was predicted to."
Results continue to trickle in, but Republicans are coming closer to a narrow House majority. Control of the Senate continues to hinge on a few tight races.
Yet Republicans had been forecast to have a much stronger showing.
Many observers, including Republicans and conservatives, are blaming the poor results on a backlash against former president Donald Trump and the controversial candidates he endorsed that went on to lose their respective races.
But young people may have also played a determining factor in the results, some analysts say.
"It's actually the same story for now three cycles in a row. When Gen Z entered the category of young American voters in 2018, we saw they had a significant impact in the 2018 midterm election," John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, told NPR in an interview.
"We saw a similar effect in 2020. So now, for the third election cycle in a row, younger Americans made the difference in state after state after state."
Early estimates have pegged that those aged 18 to 29 made up about 12 per cent of the total votes this election, which is similar to the 2018 midterms at 13 per cent. But CIRCLE estimated that 27 per cent of youth cast a ballot, the second-highest youth voter turnout in almost three decades.
However, those votes often favoured Democratic candidates by a larger margin than the rest of the country, Belle Booth said. And in some key races, they may have made the difference.
For example, in the tight Pennsylvania senate race between Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz, CIRCLE estimated that young people contributed "a significant portion" of Fetterman's margin over Oz. They estimated that youth ages 18-29 preferred Fetterman 70 per cent to 28 per cent and that young voters netted him 120,000 votes — more than half his margin of victory of about 220,000 votes.
In the Wisconsin governor's race, CIRCLE estimated 79,000 young voters chose Democratic incumbent Tony Evers, who defeated Republican Tim Michels by just 89,000 votes.