Millennials, Gen X increase their ranks in the House, especially among Democrats
The 2018 midterm elections significantly boosted the number of Millennials and Generation Xers in the lower chamber.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
The 2018 midterm elections significantly boosted the number of Millennials and Generation Xers in the lower chamber.
On election night 2018, besides the exit polls there will be an additional source of data on who voted and why, developed by The Associated Press, Fox News and NORC at the University of Chicago and based on a very different methodology. That means that depending on where you go for election news, you may get a somewhat different portrait of this year’s electorate.
Many of the millions of Americans voting in Tuesday’s midterm elections will have to do so while working around the demands of their jobs – hitting their polling places before work, taking an extra-long lunch break or going afterward and hoping to make it before the polls close. As they stand in line, many of them may wonder why it is that the United States votes on a Tuesday, of all days.
Turnout in this year’s primaries for Congress and most state governorships surged compared with the last midterms in 2014, particularly among Democrats. Nearly a fifth (19.6%) of registered voters – about 37 million – cast ballots in primary elections for the U.S. House of Representatives – a 56% increase over the 23.7 million who voted in 2014’s House primaries. Turnout that year was 13.7% of registered voters.
Mitch McConnell’s decision to shorten the chamber’s August recess isn’t unprecedented. But in an election year – when a third of senators are on the campaign trail – it’s unusual.
More members of the U.S. House of Representatives are choosing not to seek re-election than at any time in the past quarter-century.
Senate seats have rarely flipped to the other party in recent special elections, and turnout usually lags compared with regular elections for the same seat.
Read a Q&A with Pew Research Center’s Ruth Igielnik and Scott Keeter about a recent study about voter files.
Special elections to the U.S. House of Representatives tend to be low-turnout events, historically speaking, and seldom result in seats switching from one party to another.
Courtney Kennedy of Pew Research Center, who chaired survey researchers organization AAPOR’s task force on political polling in the 2016 U.S. elections, discuss the group’s findings and recommendations.
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