Exit polls have historically been unreliable in capturing the demographic composition of the electorate, so the main exit polling consortium changed its methods this year to mitigate the problem. That creates a new problem — you can’t compare this year’s exit polls to past years.
Fortunately, Catalist, a progressive data vendor company, developed a new methodology for estimating the composition of the electorate that gives us demographics that are both accurate and comparable.
This means Democrats improved on their 2014 performance in terms of youth and minority turnout. But they were unable to overcome the normal dynamic by which the midterm turnout slump disproportionately impacts young people and nonwhites. If Democrats could get the same kind of results they had in 2018 but with a more typical presidential election electorate, they might do even better in 2020.
The education story, by contrast, looks a little different. With college graduates making up 37 percent of voters, it was the best-educated electorate of all time. And the non-college educated whites who form the base of the Republican electorate fell to “only” 47 percent of voters.
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