Early Vote Totals Point Toward Record-Breaking Turnout for Midterm Elections

[mzmolly]

Midterm turnout reached a 40-year high in 2018 at 49% of the total voting-age population. Early voting totals suggest that number could be even higher in 2022.

An estimated 35.5 million Americans have already cast their votes in the 2022 midterms, and recent trends suggest turnout by Election Day could be even higher than in the past.

Contentious elections in Georgia have seen over 1.8 million votes – around 400,000 more than at this time in 2018. During the primary season, many states also saw increased participation, including North Carolina (up 50%), Arizona (21%) and Maryland (19%), all hinting that constituents want their voices heard now more than ever.

It’s a continuation of record-breaking turnout in recent years. The nonpartisan data center USAFacts reports that midterm turnout reached a 40-year high in 2018 at 49% of the total voting-age population, a dramatic uptick of over 10 percentage points from 2014. Two years later, the presidential elections experienced a 30-year turnout high, with 61.3% of Americans of eligible age making it to the polls.

In both the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential elections, it was the age 18-24 demographic that made the largest jump in turnout. According to the USAFacts analysis, youth voter turnout increased by 10 percentage points from the 2016 to 2020 presidential elections, and, while midterm voter demographics tend to skew older, the youth vote nearly doubled in 2018, increasing from 15.9% to 30.1%. In Georgia, that same age group now makes up the highest share of registered voters in this year’s election, and the state’s data hub shows they’re also expected to be the most active.

More at: USNEWS

Our youth give me hope.

[reymega life]

1. this is promising for democrats

[sop]

2. This is a very good sign.

Republicans know when more people vote, Democrats usually win. That's why they try so hard to stop them.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. Here is one of the bar graphs at the link

I had seen the link of data in another thread and threw it in a tab - https://rpubs.com/ElectProject/early_vote_2022

This is another data site in addition to the more-cited (on DU) TargetSmart "TargetEarly" data - https://targetearly.targetsmart.com/g2022

So it's good to have a couple places looking at this.

[mzmolly]

4. Thanks

for the additional info.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. You're welcome!

[Indykatie]

6. Target Smart is Usually Slow to Update The Voting Data For their Site

I like Target Smart because of some of the other tools they offer to analyze/compare previous elections. ElectProject run by Prof Mike Mcdonald at UF is much better though when it comes to timeliness for updates. That's probably because he has his Florida students involved.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. It could also be based on the times the states update their data dumps

and whether those grabbing them are doing so manually or have some program configured to do the file downloads (some kind of "GET" routine), and more sophisticated programs would know what time to grab data and could automatically rebuild the database on the spot vs waiting until all the state data is in before rebuilding.