We're in this really interesting moment, which is you see that more than ever before,

a lot of our fights are intergenerational. We need every generation in the fight.

That means that we need older people in the fight, but we also more than ever before,

need young people in the fight.

Hello, and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast. I'm your host, Lee McGowan. Let's get into it.

Last week when we talked about Michigan, we got into the importance of the youth vote.

How the youth in America really have the opportunity to change the state of politics

and how they're starting to realize it. In the 2014 midterms, only 13% of young people aged 18 to 29

voted in the election. And in case you don't remember, the result of that election were that

liberal representatives and progressive values were absolutely decimated. We handed the Senate over

to Mitch McConnell, who basically shut down anything Obama wanted to do in his last two years,

including installing a Supreme Court justice. The youth vote picked up for the 2016 presidential

election coming in at around 39%. But as we would all discover, the country we thought was moving

forward was okay with a candidate who literally ran on the idea of taking the country back.

And as horrible as the Trump years were, I think it woke the country up. Suddenly, a lot more of

us realized what was at stake, including democracy itself. By the 2018 midterms, the youth turnout was

up to 28%. And by the time we got to the 2020 elections, young people were voting at 50%,

an 11 point increase from 2016. Trump wasn't winning again on their watch. Now, while the youth didn't

quite live up to its 2018 standard in the 2022 midterms, they voted at a very respectable 23%.

And it was their vote, especially in Michigan, where the youth vote came out at a whopping 37%,

that is credited with putting the kibosh on the Republicans anticipated red wave.

Which is why GOP state legislatures are now introducing a whole new wave of restrictions.

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