🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Voter enthusiasm is down compared to the 2018 midterm elections, and former President Donald Trump may be the reason Democrats and Republicans are struggling to engage the electorate.
A Gallup poll conducted between October 3 and 20 shows that 46 percent of surveyed U.S. adults are "more enthusiastic" to vote compared with previous elections, down 18 points from the 2018 midterms.
About 57 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of Republicans say they are more enthusiastic about voting this year, based on the Gallup poll. That's a "significant reversal from June," when Republicans (58 percent) were more enthusiastic than Democrats (48 percent), and follows the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling.
The 2018 midterms experienced the highest turnout in a century and set a high bar.
"I think that was a Trump factor," Lydia Saad, Gallup's director of U.S. social research, told Newsweek. "Democrats were very enthusiastic to get out and put a stop to the Trump agenda. Republicans were very enthusiastic because Trump was in office and very motivated by Trump during his presidency."
She added, "Politics is just different without Trump being center stage. This year is a little more tempered than that."
Eric Oliver, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, told Newsweek that the 2018 election "was very much a mid-referendum" on Trump and his impeachment.
"Democrats are less enthusiastic [this year] because they are not inspired by [President] Joe Biden," Oliver said. "He hasn't found a message to galvanize the party around his leadership. Democrats are probably less enthusiastic compared with 2018 because they are not reminded every day that someone they find very objectionable is in the White House."
Midterms are notorious for being a referendum on the incumbent president, said Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.
He told Newsweek that is evident by the lack of recent references to Trump. Very few members of either party have mentioned the former president in ads and campaign stops.
It "follows the normal pattern," he said, adding that few Democrats have mentioned Biden in a positive light in their ads and statements.
"The other big change is that Trump seems to have really engaged turnout in 2018 and 2020, and to a lesser extent in 2016," Grossmann said. "It's unclear if that will remain in this election."
As of November 2, about 29.8 million Americans had voted already by mail-in ballots or early in-person voting, according to the U.S. Election Project. About 17.2 million mail-in ballots of a requested 57.2 million have been returned.
Issues of Inflation, Abortion Lead the Way
While the GOP has the proverbial political winds at its back, 57 percent of both Democrats and Republicans report having thought a lot about the upcoming elections—followed by independents at 37 percent.
Voters are giving less thought—identified as a key predictor of voter turnout—toward the upcoming election. Typically, such statistics increase as elections near.
"Traditionally, the GOP had an advantage in turnout in past elections....They don't have an advantage this year, which is good for Democrats," Saad said. "Democrats aren't ahead this year like they were in 2018. But it's not like the past where Republicans had an automatic structural advantage in midterm elections."
A separate Gallup poll shows the economy being an "extremely important" issue to 49 percent of overall respondents, followed by abortion and crime at 42 and 40 percent, respectively.
Republicans' biggest issues are the economy, heightened by fears of record-high inflation, as well as immigration and crime.
"There's really only been one other election in our midterm polling where people viewed the economy as negatively as it is now," said Saad, referencing the Democratic drubbing in the 2010 midterms due to high unemployment and an economy in recession.
Grossmann said that the economy doesn't have as strong a relationship to midterms as to presidential elections, mentioning how the economy was "pretty good" in 2014 and 2018 and still led to losses for the party of the president.
It's different this time around, he said, because inflation, gas prices and energy costs "are extremely visible" by constituents when they visit grocery stores or pay their bills.
In terms of immigration, he said voters were more animated about immigration restrictions being too strong under Trump; now they are perceived as too light under Biden.
"Republicans have kind of decided that crime is a better issue for them," Grossmann said.
Democrats' biggest issue is abortion, followed very closely by climate change.
Saad said abortion was clearly "a galvanizing force right out of the box" for Democrats following the leak of the Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade in May.
Independents could certainly be an outlier across myriad races, she said, saying it "kind of looks like a battle between [abortion and crime] for which is going to have more influence on the electorate as a second-tier issue" behind the economy/inflation.
Grossmann said there is typically a pattern that the more a policy such as abortion moves in an ideological direction, it leads in the opposite direction for the majority of voters. People respond more to losses than gains.
"There's a potential turnout effect as people absorb things that are going wrong and not in their direction....In 2018, it was an opposite pattern where Democrats were mobilized because the Republicans were moving things in their ideological direction," he said.
About the writer
Nick Mordowanec is a Newsweek investigative reporter based in Michigan. His focus includes U.S. and international politics and policies, immigration, ... Read more