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KPBS Midday Edition

The turnout story emerging from the 2022 midterm elections

A San Diego State University student waited in line for over an hour to register and cast her first ballot at the on-campus polling place at SDSU, Nov. 8, 2022.
Matthew Bowler
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KPBS
A San Diego State University student waited in line for over an hour to register and cast her first ballot at the on-campus polling place at SDSU, Nov. 8, 2022.

As the vote count in the 2022 midterm elections continues, a story is emerging about who turned out and why. UC San Diego political scientist Zoli Hajnal, co-director of the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research, joined Midday Edition on Friday with some takeaways. The conversation below has been lightly edited for clarity.

So one of the things you've noted about Tuesday's election is how similar it is to 2020. Issues that mattered to voters in the past mattered in the same way in 2022. What are some specific things you're seeing and why is that important?

Hajnal: It does seem like in many ways a very static election, certainly in terms of the issues, but also very much in terms of the demographics and politics of the vote. So in this hyper-polarized, partisan world that we live in, it was once again the case on Tuesday that almost all Democrats voted for Democratic candidates. Almost all Republicans voted for Republican candidates. You see similar trends, constant trends by ideology, age differences, gender differences, racial and ethnic differences. So the things that predicted the vote before are almost exactly the same things that predicted the vote this time around.

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One of the major differences is turnout. What are the exit polls saying about who voted on Tuesday?

Hajnal: Yeah, and the exit polls, obviously, we'd like to have more information and more concrete information, but the early results sort of suggest that one of the big differences is that the white share of the vote was greater this time around than it was in 2020. So roughly 73% of all voters in the election on Tuesday were white. That's up from about 67% in 2020. So the white voting population, which as most of us know, is largely a Republican voting population, had more of a say. And racial and ethnic minorities, who typically and generally are more Democratic, had a little bit less of a say. So that, in essence, might account for some of the movement from 2020 to 2022 in terms of the Republicans making some level of gains in certain locations.

With reproductive rights being a big issue heading into midterm elections, it was thought that women would be the deciders of this election. What did you find there?

Hajnal: The interesting thing there is that the gender gap wasn't as massive, maybe as some people were predicting it would be. So 53% of women voted Democratic and 42% of men voted Democratic. So there's definitely a gap. But that's not too dissimilar from previous elections. That doesn't mean that abortion wasn't important. So it could be that men and women moved slightly to the Democratic side because of the issue of abortion. But we at least in terms of the simple gap between men and women, we didn't see a massive shift from 2020.

There's been a lot of talk about the Gen Z vote, and in fact, about 27% of voters age 18 and 29 participated. The second highest turnout in the midterm in 30 years. What role did young voters play in the outcomes we're seeing?

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Hajnal: They played a big role, and there are two reasons why they played a big role in why one thinks that younger generations will shift the partisan balance of power going forward as well. So the two reasons why young voters played a big role is, as you say, they turned out at relatively high numbers. So 27%, which is actually a small drop from 2020, but there's a trend over the last couple of decades of younger voters participating more and more. So they were around 20% turnout, and now we're getting closer to 30%. So they have a bigger voice, number one. The other change, and maybe even bigger change in some sense, is that younger voters have become more Democratic over time. So on Tuesday, that sort of 18-to-29 year old age bracket, 63% of them voted for Democratic candidates at the House level. That's gone up from basically younger voters 10-20 years ago, being evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. So more younger voters and more consistently Democratic among the young voters who do show up indicates that as America in some sense, as older Americans have aged out or are not involved in election and more and more younger voters are involved, we could become more Democratic over time. Now, lots of other things will impact that future story, but that's an interesting point to sort of think about that we are becoming, or at least our younger generations are more Democratic.

What about the Latino vote? There was a lot of discussion about Latino voters shifting to the Republican Party ahead of the election. Is that what happened?

Hajnal: It is, and it isn't. So, yes, there is a shift of some Latinos to the Republican Party. So from a height of, say, 65%, 66% of Latinos voting Democratic at one point in time, to maybe around now, 60% voting Democratic in 2022. So there's a small drop. There wasn't a significant shift from 2020 to 2022. And so there's something happening maybe. And it could be that if this trend continues, Democrats should be worried, and the Republican Party will gain more and more Latino voters. But it hasn't been a big trend so far, and it hasn't been a long term trend. So, it's hard to know exactly what will happen. The other thing I guess I would add on that is in previous elections, we've seen reasonably large shifts back and forth among Latinos. And so a small short term shift to me, doesn't tell us that Latinos are moving over the long term to the Republican Party. So we're talking a lot about it, but I'm not sure how significant it really is.

The 2024 primary election is March 5. Find in-depth reporting on each race to help you understand what's on your ballot.