Midterm Elections were just a few weeks ago, but many of you might have not noticed or even cared. However, it’s important that you do care. Elections are very important in making sure that the people who are voted in, who will put into place policies that will end up affecting you, will actually do good for society. By the next national election in 2024, many current Neuwirth Students will be eligible to vote, so being knowledgeable on what is happening in our government is incredibly important, especially now given just how polarized and dangerous the current political climate is.

The results of the November midterms have been more favorable to Democrats than expected. Democrats have maintained the Senate, with the independent seats favoring Democrats, and the Republicans controlling the House only slightly more over the Democrats. This is absolutely unprecedented considering that historically when the Midterms end up rolling around, the House and Senate tend to flip parties. However this time, for a multitude of reasons, the Republicans just couldn’t quite catch up.

It’s important to note how remarkable this is; that momentum was really not on the Democrats’ side here. First of all, we’re experiencing some substantial economic problems at the moment and Midterms tend to go very poorly for the incumbent president’s party because of said economic problems (or any current societal problem generally). People blame the president for these problems and therefore also blame the party of the president. However, in spite of that, Republicans were not able to hold things together and achieve that “Red Wave” they were so eagerly predicting.

Many experts have speculated the reasons behind the Democratic Party’s unexpected success. However, there are a few that have stuck out. In the past few years, Republicans have been able to put out strong enough messaging to capture the attention of the average voter, only being able to mainly maintain their more fanatic voters. A lot of the Republican’s messaging, especially this past year, has been very weak. Most of their messaging has been filled more with culture war issues than the actual issues that voters care about. Their messaging has been light, and out of messaging that they do put out, it’s mainly just been trans panic, and by what we see from these elections many voters have rejected that type of messaging. Many voters seem to have a certain disdain for the Republican party, despite Biden still being currently very unpopular, due to many of the current hot-button issues like abortion rights, trans rights, and increasing threats to democracy.

Another massive reason for Republican’s underperformance is that currently the Republican party has become extremely split; between Trump-aligned Republicans and DeSantis-aligned Republicans. The main difference between those two sides being that DeSantis is more composed than Trump. As a result of that split in the party, on top of Trump’s increasing unpopularity since his departure from office, many of the Trump-endorsed candidates have lost their elections. Alongside that, there’s been many efforts by progressive organizations around the country to get people, especially in more red areas, to go out and vote for Democrats by amassing volunteers to knock on doors and canvas for Democratic politicians.

While we may not be able to point to a single reason, one thing is for sure, voter turnout matters. A big reason why the Democrats didn’t completely just lose the house and senate was because young people went out and voted against Republicans. Gen Z is overwhelmingly more liberal than the average voter, but the trend tends to be that new and young voters don’t vote. Voter turnout is already pretty low in America, for a multitude of reasons, but voter turnout for young people has always been especially low. This is either because they’re too busy with school, they’re disillusioned with the political process, or they’re just not interested or knowledgeable about politics, but this midterm election demonstrates a shift in this historical trend. A lot more younger voters have begun to participate in politics, both liberal and conservative, and this midterm election showed that in full force.

In order to elect an individual that can make a difference and who represents our nation, we must first vote for that person; figure out who is the right candidate for the job. Soon, many of you will be eligible to vote and we encourage you, when you become eligible, to register to vote and vote in