Thank you, Zoomers, for Staving Off Autocracy for Another Year

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

The 2022 midterm election is officially over (although there are still some counts to finish).

Repudiating pollsters’ and many pundits’ expectations, this election defied the odds, as the party in power, the Democrats, did not sustain the beating that was predicted.

We owe a great deal of this to the youth vote.

Once again, young voters aged 18 to 29 — aka “Zoomers” — demonstrated the second-highest turn out in nearly three decades, after 2018.

If they had stayed home, as some predicted they would, we would be looking down the barrel of the fascist takeover animating the republican party agenda.

While not finalized yet, it is estimated 27% of Zoomers cast ballots this year.

As The Guardian reported:

In some key battleground states, turnout was even higher, at 31%, and support for Democratic candidates was roughly over 60%, driven in large part by the fight for abortion rights after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade.