“In many states youth overcame changes to election laws that posed direct barriers to participation and a lack of strong and continued investment in youth registration,” said our director Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg.

"Young people absolutely did have a role in preventing that red wave from materializing as it was predicted to," said CIRCLE's elections coordinator Ruby Belle Booth.

CIRCLE estimates that 27 percent of eligible young voters cast ballots this election, the second-highest turnout for a midterm in nearly 30 years. “This is a continuation of young people showing up to do the work,” says Abby Kiesa, CIRCLE’s deputy director.

On Here & Now, Journalist Rachel Janfaza cited CIRCLE data on young people's participation and impact on the 2022 midterm election.

CIRCLE Director Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg talks about young people's electoral impact in the 2022 midterms.

"We are seeing a really active generation that start to vote early, as soon as they're eligible to vote, and continue to vote throughout this generation," said CIRCLE Director Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg

According to new data shared by Tufts University's Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, young people were the only age group in which a strong majority supported Democrats.

Ruby Belle Booth, CIRCLE's elections coordinator, said this year's election represents "a continuation of high civic engagement" among young people in recent years.

“We think this is emblematic of the different ways that young people are leveraging their political power and civic engagement in recent years,” said CIRCLE's Alberto Medina

“I think it’s very clear that young people are more than a constituency for the Democratic Party,” said CIRCLE deputy director Abby Kiesa. "They are the base of the Democratic Party."

CIRCLE, which studies young voters, also found in analyses of exit polling data that 89% of Black youth and 68% of Latino youth voted for a Democratic U.S. House candidate.

Data from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University suggest 27 percent of young voters turned out.