by Natalie Hanson
November 10, 2022
Introduction:
(Courthouse News) — Experts say widespread wins for Democrats on Tuesday night are defying early poll predictions of a “red wave” because Gen Z voters turned out in high numbers, signaling their concern for the rights of all Americans.
Across the U.S., while control of Congress is not yet settled and early results leave many ballots — including those mailed in — uncounted, Democratic wins are already being called. Candidates who embraced former president Donald Trump’s "big lie" about the 2020 election were widely defeated, while those Republican candidates who did triumph Tuesday largely did so by distancing themselves from the former president. And 25-year-old Democrat Maxwell Frost looks to have secured Florida's House of Representatives seat based in Orlando, as the first Gen Z member of Congress — after working for the anti-gun violence group March for Our Lives.
Antonio Arellano, vice president of the youth mobilization organization Next Gen America, said on Twitter that the Edison Research National Election Pool exit poll is showing that voters aged 18-29 were the only age group where more than half supported Democrats. The Tufts Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement reported Wednesday that 2022 youth turnout is likely the second-highest for a midterm election in the past 30 years, behind only the historic 31% turnout in 2018. Votes from young people made up 12% overall in this election, nearly matching the 13% youth share of the vote from the 2014 and 2018 midterms.
Those results align with a Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics poll of 2,123 18-to-29-year-olds this fall which indicated that 40% would “definitely" vote in the midterm elections, and 57% said they preferred Democratic control of Congress.
Further Extract:
Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/the-mid ... erts-say/All of the experts agreed that polling is more difficult than ever because most people ignore spam calls, emails, texts and front door visits during election season — except for senior voters. But (Kamy) Akhavan (executive director at the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future) also said Gen Z is better educated than prior generations and has experienced the Great Recession, record political polarization, a pandemic, worsening climate change and “racial unrest.”