Historic midterm blue wave: How Gen Z and voter frustration reshaped the political map

How massive voter turnout on election day has reshaped Capitol Hill, delivering Democratic control of Congress in a historic midterm blue wave. The margins telling a dramatic story here that Republicans face sweeping losses across the country, including in deep red states that President Trump had carried by double digits just about two years ago. Texas being the prime example of that. Gen Z voters are taking credit for flipping key seats and redefining the electoral map. So join us now to discuss these trends and the electorate shift. For an inside look at the voter data, we have David Dutwin with the National Opinion Research Center at U of C. David, good morning. Let's take a close look at voter turnout here. What trends did you see? Well, you know, the interesting thing is, I think, in every election, we do try to point to certain groups, right? Last election, white men, specifically white men without a college degree being a major turnout for Trump. And that's always the trend. But really, the storyline this time around is every single group that you look at. Made a major shift toward the Democrats. It doesn't almost matter whether you're looking by race, by age, by education level, by income level, every single group turned out. And yes, of course, you know, some more than others. We definitely saw that younger folks moved more Democratic, but also folks over 65. Did as much as younger folks but yeah you can see there on the screen major shift in the 18 to 29 year old group back to more so than the last two elections by a significant margin and so in that that group was a major driver but again it's it's surprising how pervasive it is like even looking by income. One of the biggest shifts was people who earn over 200,000, typically about 40% vote Democrat, and it was close to 60% in this election. So again, every single group made a strong turn toward the Democrat in this election. I want to ask you about turnout in general. I mean, historically for midterms, we see much lower turnout than we do, say, in a presidential election. I'm curious because the turnout seemed huge this time around. Is that just anecdotal or are the numbers backing that up? Yeah, the numbers are definitely backing that up. You know, for a midterm, the numbers are almost in some ways approaching what you would expect in a presidential election. There was really strong turnout. I'm starting to speak now. And yes, you know, on the other hand, when you look at the percent of the electorate in this election, Republicans were down about 4% less. And that was split by about a 2% increase in Democrats, 2% increase in independents. So not only did folks turn toward Democrats in significant numbers, but there was some evidence that core Republican bases didn't turn out the way they did two years ago. I wanna talk more about core Republican bases, okay, and focus on the electoral map As we now have the countdown on for 2028. When it comes to a state like Texas going blue, when it comes to the assumption, let's say, that California is going to go blue, Texas is going to go red, Kansas is going to go red, Mississippi is going to go red, do Americans now need to completely reimagine what the electoral map is going to look like or could look like in 2028? It is it is absolutely possible. You know, Texas for a long time has been gone from a consistently red state to more of a purple state and now and now blue state. Whether that will will stick for a number of elections really remains to be seen. I mean, And it probably you know, it probably depends on how Democrats govern. Thank You know, whether or not they will have that sticking power, of course, you know, for the strong turn in the Senate, you know, those those folks get to stay there for six years. So, you know, those seats will be blue for for some time. But of course, you know, on the House side, elections every two you. years really remains to be seen whether this will stick or not. And, you know, really probably depends on a lot of political factors that happen over the next two years that, you know, nobody really can predict right now. It just remains to be seen. I'm curious about some of those political factors and what we know about why voters showed up in the numbers that they did. I was reading in the Washington Post yesterday that voters in at least 29 places across the country, they passed bans or restrictions on data centers. Do you think that's a big reason people went to the polls? I feel like we're seeing this data center pushback, it's almost something that both sides are agreeing on. Yeah, for sure. You know, and when you talk about Texas, Texas is the number two state for data centers, really has built probably more in the last year than any other state. And so there's definitely some evidence there. Um, yeah. You know, really, when you look at the issues, I think what's really interesting is that you look at why people voted. There's almost a tie for number one. groceries and the price of everything and corruption almost get the same number and then sort of tied for for second or I guess I guess third you have gas prices and protecting democracy so in both of those it's almost like there's pairs right there's the affordability you know and then there's there's the the issue of corruption and the interesting thing about about corruption is that When you, the most important problem question is a classic question in survey research. It's been asked for, you know, decades and it almost never scores anything more than a percent, you know, and then this election literally somewhere between 35 and 40% of the electorate said that corruption was a major driver toward them voting. That's really interesting. David Upton, thank you so much for your time this morning from the UFC.