Hamilton County Voter Turnout by Generation in the 2022 General Election

Turnout in the Hamilton County Overall was down from 2018.  Here is the generational breakdown of the turnout by generation in the County, the City, and the non-City portion of the county in the 2022 General Election.

These numbers are up a bit from the final election night totals.  I pulled them from the Voter registration lists which have been updated with references to those who have voted. These are not official totals.  I presume the increase is due to additional mail in vote arriving and with the provisional votes.  The increase in the number of votes was 8,025 for the full county.  The data I am using is not "official" yet.  The Hamilton County BOE meets today to approve the provisional ballots and certify the results.

2018 overall turnout in Hamilton County was 57.52%.  I unfortunately do not have the same voter file data from 2018 saved to get a full comparison. I do have a comparison of 2020, 2021 and 2022.  This data is more difficult to compare year to year, as turnout has the variation between Presidential, Local, and MidTerm elections. To make up for that I added a measurement of Share of votes to the Share of Registered voters.  This is a totally made up ratio I created, but there are a couple interesting things:

The key takeaways: Gen Z (Zoomers) continues to underperform.  Their share of Registered voters Increased over 2020, which is just based natural aging (turning 18).  The rest of the generations either decreased or remained relatively even (Milliennials had a slight increase.)  Gen Z's share of votes dropped.  Their share of registered voters increased more than any other Generation, but they could not increase their share of votes.  This is insane because that means brand new Gen Z kids took the time to register, but didn't bother to vote.

This failure to vote by Gen Z in HamCo stands out from other reports in other states.  Many are attempting to praise younger voters for participating.  Well, I'm going to dismiss that participation trophy, because they didn't show up. No better can you see where the apathy, ignorance, and misinformation have taken the toll are on the Newly Registered Voters.  In 2022 here are the stats by generation of those with a Registration date in 2022:

5,461 members of Gen Z registered to vote in 2022, but failed to show up and vote in the general election.  That is 56.89% who took time to register to vote this year, but didn't bother to vote.  That is pathetic.  Millennials were on their heals in numbers, but managed to beat out Gen-X on the rate.  No Generation was great on this stat, which demonstrates that outreach to new registrations is something that needs to happen to get people to the polls.

We need to improve voter turnout and you can't just blame it on other people, those who get registered and don't vote are the ONLY people I am referencing in all of the stats I have put forth here.  Targeting that group is the key to change.  There is not a single way to improve it.  Many steps can be taken:  A national holiday on election day, improved education, improved outreach, better information and less disinformation.  More early voting, easier ways to update your registration and easier ways to update your address on your State ID or Driver's License also will help. None of those alone will do more than individuals getting off their assesses and going to vote EVERY election.