Young voters aim to make a difference

More young voters say they’ll definitely vote in November than have in the last two midterm elections and they increasingly would rather have Democrats than Republicans in control of Congress, a poll released by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics shows.

The survey of adults ages 18 to 29 also reveals younger Americans have greater trust in Amazon and Google than Facebook and Twitter.

But those findings came before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress last week to answer questions about data privacy, fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech.

More than a third of young Americans eligible to cast ballots in November — 37 percent — say they’ll “definitely be voting” in the elections seven months from now that will decide control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

That’s higher than the poll recorded about the same point in 2010 and 2014, the two most recent midterm elections, when 31 percent and 23 percent answered that way.

“This generation of young Americans is as engaged as we have ever seen them in a midterm election cycle,” said John Della Volpe, the institute’s polling director.

But expectations of a great surge in voting by America’s youth have been dashed in the past.

Turnout in presidential election years is always higher and even former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — two candidates who had a strong appeal to young voters — were only able to draw just more than half of this age group to vote in their first elections.

In years when the White House is in play, it’s typical for 7 in 10 senior citizens to vote.

Young, self-identified Democrats are driving almost all of the increased enthusiasm, the survey found, with 51 percent saying they’ll “definitely” vote. That’s a 9 percentage point increase since November 2017 and is significantly larger than the 36 percent of Republicans who say the same.

At this point in the 2014 election, midway through Obama’s second term, 28 percent of Democrats and 31 percent of Republicans indicated they would “definitely” be voting, while 35 percent of Democrats and 41 percent of Republicans held a similar interest in voting in the spring of 2010.

In that election, Republicans took control of the House from the Democrats.

Preference for Democratic control of Congress has grown since the institute’s young voter poll last November, with 69 percent supporting Democrats and 28 percent Republicans. That 41-point gap is up from 32 points in the last survey.

The survey of 2,631 Americans ages 18 to 29 was taken March 8-25. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.