I just heard on a podcast that only 12 of 50 governors are elected in presidential years. That is a disaster for Democrats, given the turnout numbers we have been talking about. I can understand how young voters might not get amped up to vote for one member of many in their state legislature (although it’s important), and they may often be in districts that are either deep blue or deep red, where their turnout may not matter.
But no matter what district they live in, their vote for governor counts equally; and that shit should be easy to understand. Governors are like mini-presidents! And unlike state legislators, they should be on TV a fair bit, and just generally are pretty famous within their own states (and sometimes beyond, for that matter). There’s no excuse for young voters to be skipping these elections.
From what I see, the voter participation disparity between midterm and presidential elections seems pretty similar for 18-29 versus 30-45 and not wildly different from 45-60. The 60+ not surprisingly has the tightest participation flux of only about 10%. http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics
For the record, 34 State gubernatorial elections are timed with midterms, 9 timed with presidential years, NH and VT fall on both (2 yr terms), and 5 are on off years (1 year before or after presidential)
(Scroll down to “Gubernatorial election timeline schedule”)
