My colleagues at the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education here at Tisch College have released their national report on the 2018 election and sent detailed specific reports to each of the roughly 1,031 colleges and universities that participate in our National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE). This research is based not on surveys (which have errors in sampling and self-reporting), but on official voting records for about 20 million people.

As reported in today’s Washington Post, the headline is that college student turnout more than doubled between 2014 and 2018 (the last two midterm elections). It’s true that everyone’s turnout grew in 2018, but college students far surpassed the national trend. My favorite statistic is that turnout rose on 99% of all the NSLVE campuses. Now that is a significant pre-/post- change.

The full report has much more detail on demographic groups, profiles of selected colleges, and suggestions for maintaining the momentum. As always, the actual result (40% of college students voted in 2018) remains too low, but the only way forward is by raising engagement one step at a time, and doubling it is a good step.

CIRCLE’s latest analysis finds that youth turnout increased in all 34 states for which data are now available. For example, youth turnout tripled in Texas, more than doubled in Tennessee, and rose by 20 points in Georgia. Maine already had one of the highest youth turnout rates in the country but still saw an increase. More at the CIRCLE site.

According to CIRCLE’s latest analysis of its own survey data, young people who were contacted by candidates and parties in the 2018 election cycle were much more likely to vote. Some of this is probably selection-bias: campaigns try to contact the most likely voters. But there is also accumulated evidence that contact is effective: it boosts turnout, even for low-propensity voters.

Democrats contacted substantially more youth than Republicans did in 2018. Demographics influenced who received the most contact:

These differences do not track disparities in political power and SES. On the contrary, young Black women generally face compounded disadvantages in America, yet 60% were contacted in 2018 (presumably by Democrats, for the most part). They top the list. Meanwhile, young white men were ten points less likely to be contacted.

What does this mean? It all depends on the nature of the contact and the follow-up. If Democratic candidates were simply trying to mobilize a reliable segment of their base by sending one-way messages before the election, and if African American women don’t hear from politicians again until October 2020, then the graph demonstrates political opportunism.

On the other hand, if the contact involved some listening and learning by campaigns, and if elected officials now recognize their debt to Black women and continue to engage them between elections, then the graph offers grounds for optimism.

I wouldn’t bet on the more optimistic interpretation, but it’s something to work for.

It’s also worth focusing on young Latino men, who really are left behind. I think this is partly because they are (for the most part) less involved in conventional organizations where people can be found and reached. In social science jargon, they have less “social capital” than the other categories of young Americans.

Finally, I don’t think it’s good news that’s young white men were contacted at low rates. From a partisan Democratic perspective, it could be a reasonably good sign. Democrats, who did most of the outreach to youth in 2018, directed their resources to people of color for a mix of tactical and principled reasons. But we also know that many young white men live in “civic deserts,” where they are generally disconnected from civic and political institutions. That can reinforce combustible forms of alienation. If the low contact rate reflects low levels of membership and belonging, it is evidence of a problem.

See also: Civic Deserts and our present crisis; new research on “civic deserts”; and democracy is coming to the USA.

(UCLA) On Feb. 11, Martin Wattenberg posted a Washington Post Monkey Cage article that received the headline, “In 2018, the turnout gap between young and old people didn’t really shrink at all.” He wrote,

The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University produced a widely quoted reportestimating that young Americans’ turnout had risen to the highest level it had ever recorded. This study led to headlines such as, “Watch Out 2020: Young Voters on the Rise” and “Young Voters Turned Out in Historic Numbers.”

No doubt this CIRCLE study is correct in asserting that the turnout rate of young Americans increased markedly in 2018, compared with recent midterm elections. But so did the turnout rate of all other age groups.

The crucial question, then, is this: Did 2018’s massive increase in turnout reduce the wide gap between the turnout rates of young and old Americans?

No. Official records of participation in three states between 2006 and 2018 show that this was not the case.

Wattenberg is not wrong that everyone’s turnout rose in 2018, presumably because Donald Trump raised the perceived stakes of politics and nationalized congressional elections. But it is noteworthy that young people at least kept pace with the average increase, because low youth turnout in midterm elections had hitherto been a very stable pattern.

Furthermore, if you look carefully at the graphs in Wattenberg’s article, the upward slope for youth turnout is actually steeper than that for other age groups. Not vastly steeper, but notably so.

Now CIRCLE has used the voter files for the 17 states that have made them available so far to examine the relative gains in youth and older people’s turnout.

In 15 of the 17 states, youth turnout rose faster than older people’s turnout, meaning young voters expanded their share of the electorate. In certain closely contested races, the increase was dramatic–for instance, youth turnout more than doubled in Georgia and Montana.

In my view, a young-adult turnout rate of 31% is unacceptably low, but the only way to get to a reasonable level is by raising it one election at a time. A 10- or 11-point gain in one year is a very substantial step in the right direction, and it already made a difference to the results.

According to my colleagues at CIRCLE (based on their own original survey),

• Almost two-thirds (64%) of youth said they had paid ‘some’ or ‘a lot’ of attention to news about the Parkland shooting.
• Young people who said they were actively involved with or at least agreed with the post-Parkland movement were 21 percentage points more likely to self-report that they voted in the 2018 midterm elections.
• Young people who reported being actively involved in the movement were more likely to say they were contacted by a campaign both before October AND and in the last six weeks before the election.
• Among all 18 to 24-year-olds, 43% percent said that the Parkland shooting influenced their vote choice for Congress and in local elections at least “somewhat,” with 20% saying that it affected their decision “a lot.”

One reason youth involved in anti-gun-violence activism voted at a higher rate may have been their efforts to engage their own peers in voting. Of those who supported the movement, 44% said they had tried to convince others to vote in 2018.

As always, read the whole thing on the CIRCLE site.

Here is the racial/ethnic composition of the Democratic House caucus for the next Congress.*

I do not display this ratio to endorse the Democrats (or to ignore the people of color who are GOP House members), but simply because the Democrats will control the business of the House. Any substantial voting bloc within the Democratic caucus will have leverage. Starting in January, 42 percent of the caucus will be people of color, and roughly another quarter will be white women.

Nobody awarded these representatives their jobs; they won campaigns. And within the caucus, two of the five top leaders will be African Americans; a third leader will be Latino.

In the great sweep of history, we have seen Europeans dominate the globe: genocidally replacing whole populations, transporting millions as enslaved people, and directly colonizing or else economically exploiting most other countries.

In North America, some of them created a republic on land that their ancestors had taken by force, writing slavery into its charter. But the republic also made an appeal to equality, and the indigenous and enslaved people helped to build its physical assets and its culture from the start. Its people gradually turned this republic into more of a democracy, often against the will of a majority of the citizens of European extraction, but with key support from some of them.

And now we are seeing glimpses of a future in which the descendants of enslaved people and dispossessed people and refugees and economic migrants will hold a controlling stake in the world’s most powerful nation. For eight years, the son of a Kenyan man was the chief executive and the head of state. The governing party in the US House is still majority-white, but now just by a whisker. Nothing will pass the House without substantial support from members of color within the Democratic caucus.

The prime minister of Ireland is of Indian extraction. Many European countries score higher than the US on standard measures of equity. But nowhere in Europe will descendants of the Global South form a durable governing majority. Nor have people of color been part of their cultures all along. In the US, the backlash to equality is powerful, resistance is strong, and success is by no means inevitable. Still, if we listen hard, we can hear some of Leonard Cohen’s music beginning to play:

It’s coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It’s here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And it’s here they got the spiritual thirst
[…]
Democracy is coming to the USA

*Data from USA Today on Nov. 12. The current tally may be slightly different, and I did not fact-check whether anyone who belongs to two minority groups was counted twice. But this is close to accurate.

CIRCLE has released a highly substantive analysis of social media and the 2018 youth vote that is worth reading in full.

It probably won’t surprise you that many young adults heard about the election on social media. In fact, it might be worth pausing over the fact that only 47 percent saw something about it on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and/or Twitter. It is possible to go through an election cycle without seeing much about politics on social media if your friend-networks are apolitical. We talk a lot about polarization into left and right, but an equally significant phenomenon is the division between political and apolitical Americans. That was less of a problem when people got their information from sources like broadcast TV and newspapers, which forced everyone to see political headlines.

More than one quarter of young adults heard about the election only on social media, not from traditional outreach by campaigns, candidates, and parties. That probably means that social media is expanding the number of youth who are engaged in the election.

The more you hear about an election, the more likely you are to vote. Compared to young adults who had heard about the election both on social media and from campaigns or candidates, young adults who recalled no outreach were less than half as likely to say (in October) that they were extremely likely to vote.

Some selection is at play here. If you are already a likely voter or part of a community that is seen as active, campaigns are more likely to contact you. If you have friends who vote, you are more likely to see information about the election online, but you might have voted anyway. Maybe you even pick friends who are into politics. Still, evidence from randomized experiments shows that outreach boosts turnout, and at least some of these differences must be attributable to the effects of outreach.

These two graphs from CIRCLE tell the story of youth in the 2018 election.

First, turnout rose dramatically. The blue line shows estimates of youth turnout using the only method that’s available immediately after an election. CIRCLE relies on the exit polls plus the number of ballots cast and demographic data to generate that line. As shown, this estimate has tracked a different method (the Census Bureau’s November surveys, which simply ask people whether they voted) pretty well historically. As CIRCLE acknowledges, their method could lead to errors if the exit polls’ age breakdown is wrong; but it’s the best available method, and it suggests a very strong year for youth.

Second, although young people do not always vote Democratic, they sure did this year. The partisan gap is unprecedented. I happen to think it’s folklore that once people have voted the same way three times, they keep voting that way for life. However, folklore sticks for a reason, and it’s certainly plausible that voting for the same party a few times in a row creates a habit that tends to persist. If that’s true, Republicans are taking a chance on long-term catastrophic damage.

Meanwhile, if you’re a Democrat in a mood to be a little chagrined by yesterday because your high expectations were not quite met (after all, you are a Democrat), just don’t blame youth. These trends are startlingly positive for Democrats. The problem lies further up the age pyramid.

In 2016, everyone thinks the Senate “map” is terrible for Democrats. Forty-two Republican incumbents don’t face an election this year, whereas Democrats must defend 24 incumbents, 10 of them in states that Donald Trump won in 2016–sometimes by very large margins. Even a Blue Wave is expected to leave the Republicans in charge of the Senate.

You would think that 2020 would have to be better for Democrats. After all, Democratic voters outnumber Republicans in national votes for the president and the House. If, by the luck of the draw, the Democrats face a bad Senate map one year, the next time has to be better–right?

Actually, 2020 looks like another pretty hard year for the Dems. According to Nathaniel Rakich in FiveThirtyEight, 22 Republican Senators will face reelection. That sounds like fertile ground for Democrats, except that only two of those 22, Cory Gardner and Susan Collins, represent states that Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Based on that information, you might expect Republicans to lose just a seat or two. Meanwhile, 11 Democratic Senators will face reelection, and two of them represent states that Trump won in 2016: Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire (which was close) and Doug Jones of Alabama (which Trump won by 27 points). Based on that information, you might expect the Democrats to lose Jones and maybe one or two more.  If each party loses a seat or two to the other, it will be a wash, preserving the Republican majority.

How can this be? One reason is that a harder year will finally arrive for the Republicans in 2022. Twelve Democrats and 22 Republicans will have to defend seats that year, including several Republicans in swing states: Rubio in Florida, Grassley in Iowa (if he runs again at 89), Burr in North Carolina, Portman in Ohio, Toomey in Pennsylvania, and Johnson in Wisconsin. All the Dems who are up in 2022 are in either blue or purple states.

But the other reason is the extraordinary gap between the Senate and the American population. Even now, with the Senate controlled by Republicans, Democratic senators represent substantially more people:

The Constitution enshrines this imbalance. Anything in the whole document can be changed by amendment, “provided that… no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.” This is is our only unamendable rule.

Long-term predictions are foolish, but I think you can imagine a pattern of Democratic presidents and House majorities being systematically stymied by Republican senates and the Supreme Court that the Senate has shaped. Then a significant majority of the public will be consistently blocked by an increasingly radicalized minority that is based in different parts of the country as we address climate crises, AI, and other truly profound challenges. Many people will not trace the failures of the government to specific provisions in our Constitution; they will perceive a government that’s inexplicably unresponsive and unrepresentative. And that, it seems to me, is a recipe for constitutional collapse.

See also: is our constitutional order doomed?; two perspectives on our political paralysis; and are we seeing the fatal flaw of a presidential constitution?

In The Washington Post, Amy Gardner reads some tea leaves that might foretell youth turnout in November.

On one hand, the good news: “In Pennsylvania, youth voters have made up nearly 60 percent of all new registrants, Target­Smart reported in September. The share of the electorate that is under age 30 has grown since 2017 in several key states, including Nevada, North Carolina and Florida, according to state voter registration data tracked by the firm L2. In Virginia, requests for student absentee ballots, at about 30,000, are about 50 percent higher than in last year’s gubernatorial election.”

We could add that CIRCLE’s youth polling finds much higher levels of intent to vote than we have seen recently. And these data from Texas look promising:

On the other hand, Gardner notes,

There are plenty of reasons for skepticism about an age group that typically performs dismally at the polls. In 2016, young Americans were expected to turn out heavily against Trump, but the actual share of voters under 30 who cast ballots was 43 percent of eligible voters — about the same as the previous presidential election in 2012 and lower than 2008. (Overall turnout in 2016 was 60 percent.)

Midterm performance is typically far worse: Just 16 percent of young Americans cast ballots in 2014. The highest midterm turnout among voters under 30 in the past three decades was a mere 21 percent in 1994.

And some of the tea leaves seem to foretell just a modest improvement:

In Nevada, young voters’ share of the electorate was 18.6 percent in August, up from 17.5 percent in September 2017, according to L2. In North Carolina, it was 18.3 percent in October, up from 16.7 percent in September 2017. And in Florida, it was 16.6 percent in September, up from 15.6 percent a year earlier.

Meanwhile, in Politico, Marc Caputo, Matt Dixon, and Isabel Dobrin write:

THE YOUNG PEOPLE WILL … STAY HOME? — Remember all that talk of how “the young people will win” and come out in force in Florida, especially after the Parkland massacre? So far, it’s not happening. Voters between the ages of 18-29 are 17 percent of the registered voters in Florida but have only cast 5 percent of the ballots so far. They tend to vote more Democratic. Meanwhile, voters 65 and older are 18.4 percent of the electorate but have cast 51.4 percent of the ballots. And older voters tend to vote more Republican.

Their analysis is based on Daniel Smith’s chart of the early votes so far in Florida, which shows all age groups rising but youth by the smallest amount:

A bunch of different statistics are being cited here: the number of voters or registrants in various age groups, the turnout (the percentage of eligible people in each category who actually voted), and the share of the electorate (what proportion of all voters fit in each category). These articles also cite statistics about registration, early voting, and total voting. It’s easy to get confused.

I expect turnout to rise for the population as a whole, in large part because of the actual and perceived high stakes of the 2018 election. I think youth turnout will also rise but youth will face a challenge keeping pace with the general increase. The difference between them and older voters will probably look better than in Dan Smith’s chart, because early voting seems to appeal especially to older people.

But we could still see various scenarios.

If youth turnout and share of the electorate both rise, it will be a great year for youth voting. Youth turnout could actually fall, but that would really surprise me. If youth turnout rises but no faster than–or not as fast as–the turnout of older people, then youth share will shrink. This will be reported by many news outlets as a decline. That interpretation will not be an outright error. If you want to exercise more influence on the outcome, you must increase your share of the vote. A flat or shrinking share means having no more influence. Also, if turnout rises but youth turnout rises less than average, it will pose questions about the impact of the nonpartisan and partisan efforts specifically to engage youth.

But it will also be true that more youth have voted, which will be worth celebrating if you care about youth engagement. And it will break a pattern, because historically youth turnout has been remarkably flat in midterm elections. Breaking that pattern might be a small positive step even if youth share shrinks slightly.