Republican candidates all across the country were swept into office on Nov. 4, many of them sending incumbent Democratic lawmakers packing.
The GOP, for its part, ran several aggressive, big-dollar campaigns that drew sharp contrasts between Republican lawmakers and the White House and its unpopular occupant.
The Democratic Party, however, failed miserably to mobilize millennial voters, a crucial voting bloc that it has come to rely on recently for electoral victory.
Voters aged 18-29 made up only 13 percent of the total votes cast in the 2014 midterm elections, according to CNN exit polling data. Of this 13 percent, 54 percent went to the Democrats, while only 43 percent went to Republican candidates.
The problem with the 2014 statistics is that that they are either only slightly better than what Democrats got in the 2010 midterms or well below what they got in 2012, when President Obama ran for re-election against former Republican Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
In the infamous 2010 “red wave” midterm cycle, when the Democratic Party suffered major losses everywhere, voters aged 18-29 accounted for 12 percent of the total vote. Democrats got 55 percent of this vote.
Millennial turnout figures for the 2012 presidential election are far more impressive.
In 2012, voters aged 18-29 accounted for 19 percent of the total vote. Of that 19 percent, Democrats captured 60 percent, while Republicans got only 37 percent.
Now, it’s important to note that the electorate in presidential election years tends to be younger. The point here, however, is that the Democratic Party spared no expense in 2014 trying to turn out millennial voters. Indeed, the Democrats focused a great deal of time, money and energy on silly, celebrity-studded “get out the youth vote” gimmicks.
Apparently, this didn’t work out too well for the White House and its allies.
