It’s now less than 24 hours until Election Day, and new data suggests that Americans are ready to turn out in record numbers to make their voices heard.
Forty million people have already voted early as of Sunday, outpacing the 2018 midterms by about 1 million votes.
And polling from NBC News shows that 70% of registered voters are enthusiastic about the elections. Most notably, 59% of independent voters expressed a high interest in the 2022 midterms, compared to 49% at this point before the 2018 midterms.
This is a welcome sign of health for America’s electorate. It suggests that the historic voter turnout in the last two elections was no fluke – more and more Americans are taking a lasting personal interest in the future of the nation.
That’s an important development in a country where we’ve too often taken the right to vote for granted. Despite being the world’s oldest continuously functioning democracy, the U.S. ranks only 31st in the world in voter turnout, according to Pew Research.
