Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne writes on the “unprecedented gap between the entire potential electorate and those who intend to vote,” and how, depending on today’s turnout, this may affect the future in both voter participation and voter mobilization in midterm elections. Dionne particularly focuses on whether this means the potential electorate (as represented by the growing number of young and low-income voters) will actually match the typical, “likely” voter turnout.
“We’ll see if that happens on Tuesday,” he writes. “Perhaps the likely voter screens are wrong and young voters will surprise the pollsters. Or the Democrats will have to go back and ask themselves if there was more they could have done to keep younger voters engaged. And the country will have to ask if it should be drawing excessively broad conclusions about the entire country from a midterm election in which older voters are vastly overrepresented compared with members of the rising generation.”