Republicans didn’t achieve anywhere near the success they had hoped to achieve in this year’s midterm elections in spite of historical trends suggesting that the GOP, as the “out” party facing an incumbent president, would have the upper hand.
Ultimately, young voters played a large role.
A look at the data suggests there probably wasn’t a surge of youth participation relative to the rest of the electorate. But it does suggest that Democrats defied election expectations this year because of a historically large age gap that saw young voters overwhelmingly back Democratic candidates.
CNN’s analysis found that House Democratic candidates won voters younger than 30 by 28 points, an increase from the party’s 26-point edge with this group in 2020.
In other words: Young folks may not have turned out at historic levels in terms of sheer numbers, but the ones who turned out, by and large, weren’t rocking with the Republican Party.
All this raises the question: How much more money will right-wingers continue to pump into self-proclaimed youth whisperers in the conservative movement?
Turning Point USA (covered on this blog previously) is a prime example. The Arizona-based nonprofit, led by right-wing extremist Charlie Kirk, has been lauded by conservatives as the pre-eminent voice of a young, budding conservative movement. Seemingly every Republican with hopes of winning an election — or mere adoration from young people — has kissed Kirk’s ring and promoted themselves before Turning Point’s audience. Donors have plunged millions of dollars into Kirk’s operation with little to show for it. The organization backed a slate of election losers in these midterms, from extremist Senate candidate Blake Masters in Arizona to House candidate John Gibbs in Michigan, who once argued against women’s suffrage.
Peruse Kirk’s Twitter feed over the past week, and you can see him go from being extremely bullish on the GOP’s hopes for the midterms to extremely downtrodden and conspiratorial over the party’s failures. His group even backed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, whose chances of victory have dwindled since the election.
Some right-wingers are encouraging the GOP to do some soul-searching to determine why the party performed so poorly among young people.
My NBC colleague Ben Collins could save them some money in consultation fees:
I talked a little bit last night on TV about why the GOP are losing young people:
— follow @bencollins on bluesky (@oneunderscore__) November 11, 2022
Maybe — and just hear me out — making up weird fairytales and being incessantly cruel to their most targeted friends all of the time is not a great longterm electoral strategy. pic.twitter.com/WtQpULxJLI
Right-wing youth outreach groups like Turning Point USA are premised on the belief that young voters can be widely convinced to support conservative cruelty as long as there’s a veneer of youthfulness over it. Very often, this comes across as mean and condescending to young people. That’s the point I made here, after Turning Point invited Kyle Rittenhouse to headline one of their events.
@msnbc Yes, you are listening to a hip-hop remix of KyleRittenhouse’s name. #micdrop by @jahanmeansworld #msnbc
♬ original sound – MSNBC
Organizations like Turning Point are beloved in the conservative movement. They’ve convinced the olds in the GOP that they have their fingers on the pulse of young America, but they’ve shown no proof that they actually know what young people want — or that they can persuade young people otherwise.
That said, I’m fine seeing right-wingers waste their money. So, in that case: Keep funding these hapless youth whisperers, GOP.
They’re definitely not taking you for a ride.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.