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A new poll released by Gallup on the eve of the 2018-midterm elections indicates that a historic number of Americans plan to be aware that midterm elections do in fact exist. The results, which surveyed a representative sample of registered voters, indicate that 63% of Americans have plans to know that midterm elections are taking place on Tuesday, November 6th, up from a dismal 52% in 2014.
“Voters, particularly the liberal base, have an uncharacteristically high level of standard political knowledge this campaign season. We haven’t seen this level of general understanding about the basics of U.S. government since the early 1930’s,” explained Dianne Harris, a political science professor at Brown University. “This is promising because broad recognition that midterms are a thing that happens in between Presidential election cycles is an important step in increasing civic engagement and getting Americans to think about maybe voting at some point in their lives.”
“A whopping 65% of registered Democrats and 61% of registered Republicans sort of get that even though nobody is running for President this year, there is still a Congressional election,” continued Harris, who also indicated that the percentage of young people who know that the entire House of Representatives is up for re-election every two years has also reached an all-time high of 46%. “Furthermore, an astounding 54% of total voters even know there are also elections taking place at the state and local level.”
At press time, most Americans did not vote.
