Both Parties' Voters Are Keyed Up for Midterm Elections.
Byline: Lydia Saad
Synopsis: Americans are expressing near record enthusiasm for voting in this year's midterm elections, driven by strong interest from both parties.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' enthusiasm for voting in November is significantly higher than it was in the prior six midterm election years. Fifty-five percent of U.S. adults say they are "more enthusiastic" about voting than usual, which contrasts with between 37% and 50% saying the same in Gallup's final pre-election surveys each midterm year from 1994 through 2014. Currently, 33% say they are "less enthusiastic."
The latest results are based on Gallup polling conducted Sept. 17-23, as Congress has been holding hearings on President Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh.
Gallup's full midterm-election trend on voter enthusiasm -- including all measures taken prior to the final pre-election poll each year -- shows that voter enthusiasm was higher than today only once, in March 2010. At that time, shortly after Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, 61% of U.S. adults said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting. This proved temporary, however, as it fell to 49% in May 2010 and was 50% at the time of the election.
More generally, it appears that public enthusiasm about voting settles in to its final pattern by the fall of election years. In all midterm years when Gallup asked the enthusiasm measure multiple times (1994, 1998, 2006, 2010 and 2014), the percentage feeling more enthusiastic than usual about voting either stayed the same or increased slightly between August or September and the final pre-election measure.
Today's heightened enthusiasm is the result of high levels of enthusiasm among Republicans and Democrats -- possibly reflecting both party groups' enhanced recognition of the importance of the election in light of the high-stakes Kavanaugh hearings.
Sixty-one percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners and 58% of Republicans and Republican leaners say they are more enthusiastic about voting in November compared to prior elections. These levels roughly match Republicans' record-high enthusiasm in 2010, Barack Obama's first midterm, when the GOP won a whopping 63 seats. But this is the first time in Gallup's trend since 1994 that both parties have expressed high enthusiasm.
By contrast, the only two other times a majority of either party felt more enthusiastic than usual about voting, there was a partisan imbalance. In 2010...
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