Thousands of young new voters are casting their votes early, fueling Democratic hopes that the youth vote might push them to victory in the 2018 midterm elections.

The number of voters between 18 and 29, a group that typically struggles with low voter turnout, have already cast more votes than they did during the entire previous midterms in almost every state, according to The Hill. According to a national poll released on October 29 out of the Institute of Politics and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, 40% of 18- to 29-year-olds plan to “definitely vote,” which would double the 2014 results.

As reported by Time, that would be a historically high level of turnout for the age group, whose current high score is 21% from elections in 1986 and 1994. Just 17% of voters under 25 turned out for the 2014 midterms, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

This trend is coming to light in Texas, where early voting by young people is up more than 500%, according to The Independent, where a fiery Senate race is happening between between Ted Cruz, the incumbent Republican and failed presidential hopeful, and Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate and national political heartthrob. In Georgia, voter turnout for 19- to 28-year-olds is up 476%. In Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Florida, and Arizona, youth voting has doubled; in the case of Pennsylvania, has increased fourfold, according to The Independent.

“Voters under the age of 30, relative to their ’14 turnout, are outperforming every other group,” Tom Bonier, a Democratic strategist at TargetSmart, a firm that tracks the early vote, told The Hill. “It’s not just like a presidential year surge where you’re getting younger voters who only vote in presidential elections coming out in a midterm. A lot of these young people are voting in their first election period.”

But young people who typically vote Democratic aren’t the only ones flooding to the polls in extraordinary numbers. According to The Independent, early voting in Texas and Georgia also spiked among white voters and those over 65, groups that typically cast Republican ballots.

Keep in mind that early voting in a tricky way to look at an election: none of this data shows us if these voters would have voted anyway on Election Day but decided to do it sooner, or if they represent completely new voters. Moreover, while the numbers do show what could be an increased enthusiasm at least for early voting, it doesn’t show how they voted, since exit polls aren’t usually conducted for mail-in ballots and early voters.

“The youth vote is higher than 2014 so far, but so few young people have voted at this point it is not hard to double the numbers,” Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist who tracks early voting totals, told The Hill. “Young people tend to vote in larger numbers during the week prior to the election, and we're seeing some evidence that young people are indeed starting to turn out.”

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