Voter enthusiasm up sharply compared to 2014: poll

Voter enthusiasm is now significantly higher than during the lead-up to the midterm elections in 2014, according to a poll released Sunday.

Seventy-six percent of respondents in The Washington Post-ABC News poll said that they are “absolutely certain to vote,” with 12 percent saying they “probably” will.

In 2014, when Republicans took the Senate, 65 percent of respondents said in a similar survey that they would definitely vote.

{mosads}The increase seen in the new polling is driven by young people and nonwhite and Democratic voters.

Some 67 percent of Americans aged 18-39 said they would absolutely vote this November, compared to 42 percent who said the same thing in 2014.

Nonwhite voters also reported a sharp increase in enthusiasm, rising from 48 percent who said four years ago that they would absolutely vote to 72 percent this year.

And the percentage of Democrats who said they will certainly vote in November jumped by 18 percentage points, to 81 percent.

Republican enthusiasm, meanwhile, increased by only 4 percentage points, with 79 percent of GOP respondents saying they will absolutely vote in the 2018 midterms.

Seventy-five percent of GOP respondents said they would certainly vote when Republicans took the Senate and gained seats in the House in 2014, while only 63 percent of Democrats told pollsters they absolutely would two years ago, a 12-point margin.

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll interviewed 991 registered voters from Oct. 8-11 and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.