2018 brought widespread victories for Democrats and progressives, but it also yielded some disappointments. While we saw the highest midterm turnout in a century—currently estimated at 49.2 percent—the electorate was still older and whiter than it was two years ago, according to analysis by the Democratic firm Catalist.
In fact, 76 percent of the 2018 electorate was white, compared to 74 percent in 2016. Likewise, 63 percent of voters this year were 50 or older, while only 55 percent of those in 2016 fell into that age cohort.
But there’s good news in this, too: Because presidential-year electorates have consistently been younger and more diverse than their midterm counterparts, we should at a minimum rebound to 2016 percentages in 2020—and perhaps we’ll do better.
What will probably compound this diversification is the blockbuster turnout we’re likely to see in 2020. Given the already incredible 2018 turnout rate, there’s every reason to believe that 2020 will surpass the highest turnout rates of the past 100 years:
- 2016: 60.1 percent
- 2008: 61.6 percent
- 1960: 63.8 percent
- 1908: 65.7 percent
2016 saw much better relative turnout than 2014, so we will probably not see the same increase we saw from 2014 to 2018 (up by 12.5 percentage points!), but there’s every reason to believe we can surpass 1960.
And as non-voters are predominately younger and less white, significant increases in turnout are likely to also increase the racial and generational diversity of the electorate. This is particularly important for Sunbelt states with large minority populations and lots of young voters, such as North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas.
The 2018 electorate was also the best-educated in history (37 percent of voters this year say they graduated from college), and the 2020 electorate will likely meet or surpass that threshold as well, given past trends. For each successive election since at least 2006, the education level of the electorate has either stayed flat or grown. That makes sense, as younger generations are much more likely to be college-educated than older ones. While the 2016-to-2018 shift represented an unusually high jump (34 percent to 37 percent), the likely high turnout in 2020 means that this figure should at least equal 2018’s.
Of course, none of these statistics guarantees a single victory will come our way in 2020. 2018 was a success in large part because of the progressive community’s time, money, sweat, and tears. We’ll need all of that and more to ensure that we can build on this year’s successes in two years’ time.