Voter Anxiety Has Not Kept Americans From the Polls in Recent Midterms

WASHINGTON — Americans have reported widespread anxiety about politics and the country’s direction, yet recent U.S. midterm elections have drawn some of the highest turnout in more than a century. Data from the U.S. Election Lab at the University of Florida and the U.S. Census Bureau show that 50.0% of the voting-eligible population cast ballots in 2018, the highest rate for a non-presidential election year since 1914.

The pattern largely continued in 2022, when turnout was approximately 46.9%—the second-highest midterm rate since 1970. Those figures challenge the historical assumption that public pessimism leads to voter apathy. In 2014, public dissatisfaction with government was also high, but partisan polarization was less pronounced; turnout fell to 36.7%, its lowest midterm level since World War II.

Political scientists attribute the more recent shift to “negative partisanship”: voters motivated less by enthusiasm for their own party’s candidates than by fear or anger toward the opposing party. National polling by major nonpartisan institutions, including the Pew Research Center and the Gallup Organization, consistently highlights that dynamic. Although recent surveys indicate that a vast majority of Americans feel “exhausted” or “angry” when thinking about politics, those emotions have historically correlated with greater, not lower, intent to vote.

Ahead of recent midterm cycles, polls regularly found that up to 80% of registered voters were concerned about the nation’s future or believed the country was on the “wrong track.” Registration rates and early voting participation nevertheless continued to break records in key battleground states, illustrating how anxiety can mobilize voters rather than deter them.

Changes in voting access have also shaped participation. After mail-in and early in-person voting options expanded rapidly during the 2020 pandemic, many states permanently codified those measures. Some states, conversely, enacted stricter voting regulations. The heightened focus on voting procedures has kept voting highly visible in the public consciousness, further driving participation on both sides of the political spectrum.