Youth turnout could save, or sink, Democrats in 2022

Those trends, though, dramatically reversed in the past two elections, enormously boosting Democrats in the process. In the 2020 presidential election, exactly half of eligible voters younger than 30 cast ballots, according to a detailed study by CIRCLE (the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement), an institute at Tufts University that studies younger voters. That was still less than the number for older generations, but it constituted a huge jump from their 39% turnout rate in 2016. Youth turnout, the group found, did not decline in any state from 2016 through 2020 and multiple states saw double-digit increases — including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, states that keyed Biden’s victory.