Could Voter Turnout over ride Republican’s Suppression efforts next year?

By the time Obama left office, operatives in both parties were talking openly about a structural advantage for the GOP in midterm elections, given these turnout patterns among non-White and especially younger voters.

Then came 2018.

In 2018, more than 118 million Americans voted, exactly half of the eligible population, according to McDonald’s calculations. That was the highest midterm turnout, as a share of eligible voters, since 1914, before women won the right to vote.

And while the 2018 electorate was still somewhat older than in 2016, the gray shift wasn’t nearly as powerful as in the past, because young adults turned out at twice the level they did in the last midterm, of 2014. Turnout among Blacks and Hispanics also declined much less than in previous midterms, with the result that the White share of the vote actually fell from 2016 to 2018, according to McDonald’s calculations, an unprecedented pattern in recent years. (Another important new dynamic solidified in 2018 when Democrats performed unusually well among White voters with at least four-year college degrees, who have been the most reliable voters in midterm elections; that could benefit the party in 2022 as well.) The turnout wave continued into 2020, with nearly 160 million people voting and turnout among young people and people of color again rising dramatically….