Young People key to Democrats Future

A new Project Vote study shows both why Democrats are worried about next year's midterm elections and optimistic about the long term trends for their party.

This revolves around two key findings about turnout of young voters:

For the past seven election cycles, the national turnout rate in mid-term elections averaged 15 percentage points lower than the preceding presidential election with the steepest decline represented by younger voters.

Since the 2000 presidential election, young voter turnout has increased at a rate of about 30% per election.