Voter enthusiasm surveys are showing signs of a gathering “Silver Wave” of older voters surging to the polls on November 3 for the 2026 midterm elections and voting in greater numbers for Republican candidates than they have in recent years, according to GOP pollster and campaign strategist Matt Towery.

Combined with the traditional huge drop-off in the number of younger voters aged 18 to 39 in midterm contests, who are among the Democratic Party’s most loyal supporters, the Silver Wave could mean a bunch of Democratic congressional candidates now making relocation plans to the nation’s capital after the election could be in for an unexpected surprise.

And, according to Towery, a key factor in bringing that outcome about would be the explosion of media coverage and enthusiasm among young people for candidates who, like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D), identify themselves as socialists or those like Claire Valdez, who is running in New York’s 7th Congressional District, as members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

“The Silver Wave, right now, I am seeing in poll after poll after poll. The 18-39 years old crowd, who are supposed to be dying to turn out to vote to turn everything upside down, they are about 30 points less enthusiastic about voting than the 65 years old and over, who are the most enthusiastic and for the first time in three election cycles are going for Republicans in droves,” Towery explained in an October 12 video post on X in which he elaborated on comments he’d made earlier in the day on Sean Hannity’s radio show.

“Why is that? Because of socialism. [Former Speaker of the House] Newt Gingrich brilliantly told Republicans to concentrate on the ‘socialism issue,’ and he was right because the older voters know about the Soviet Union, they know about Cuba, they know about the entry of China, they know the history of the collapse of the entire communist regimes in Eastern Europe. They understand the oppressiveness,” Towery said.

Many younger voters know little or nothing about the cruelty and genocide that has characterized every major socialist regime since the Soviet Union took over Russia in the October 1917 Revolution. Historian Robert Conquest, in a 1970 analysis for the U.S. Senate, estimated that as many as 21.5 million Soviet citizens had been executed or otherwise murdered by the communist regime, while a similar analysis performed by Richard Walker put the casualty total as approaching 64 million under Chairman Mao’s communist China. In addition, at least one million people died at the hands of the Soviet puppet states of Eastern Europe between 1945 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

“A lot of these younger folks have never been taught about this in secondary school or in college. They were told in fact the complete opposite, and that is why you are seeing these numbers so strong and so motivated among senior voters,” Towery pointed out.

“Now, does that mean we’re going to have to re-weight the polls? We might, once we see how the early voting goes and some of the mail-ins, and we see how many seniors are turning in those ballots, what the ratios are. We may have to adjust our weighting and when we do, that’s going to make some of these races that look like Democrat by three, four, five points move very close to being even or with the Republican ahead,” Towery added.

“Sorry, that’s just the way it goes when you’re a good pollster,” Towery continued. “I work with people like Robert Kahaly at Trafalgar Group, the folks over at Rasmussen, others. They’ve gotten it right in 2016, 2020, 2024. In 2022, we got hit a little bit because we believed what the national media was telling us, it was a wave for the Republicans. But it turned out not to be true. All the big fancy pollsters were the ones who said that Red Wave was coming, but it fell apart at the end. But this time, we are watching very carefully because once again, they have a Blue Wave that is massive. But we’re not so sure it’s going to be so massive.”

Towery’s analysis comes hard on the heels of emerging evidence that Democratic optimism about a Blue Wave on November 3 is questionable at best. As The Washington Stand previously reported, the highly respected Cook Political Report’s recent survey found Democrats and Republicans drawing the same 41% net favorability rating among registered voters, while “capitalism” drew a 63% rating, compared to only 32% for “socialism” and 30% for “Democratic Socialists of America.”

Turnout is almost always a decisive factor in determining which party prospers or fails in midterm elections, and data compiled by USAFacts points to the critical importance of young and older voters for both major political parties.

“In the most recent full election cycle, young people not only had the lowest presidential vote turnout, but they were also the least likely to vote in the midterms. Less than 30% of 18 to 24-year-olds voted in the 2022 election. Conversely, people 65 or older had the highest turnout and smallest drop-of, according to USAFacts.

But USAFacts also points to data that cuts against the possibility of a Silver Wave carrying GOP candidates to unexpected midterm victories.

“Every four years, a pattern repeats: Fewer Americans vote in the midterm election than did in the presidential race before it. That voter drop-off has persisted for decades, but in the last two election cycles midterm turnout was higher than it was for much of the past four decades,” USAFacts notes.

Presidential turnout since the 1980 contest has averaged 63% of eligible voters, according to USAFacts, and the turnout two years after each of those races for the Oval Office has dropped on average by 15%. But the 2018 midterms showed a turnout decrease of only 8%, and in 2022 the turnout was 52%, second only to 2018 since 1980.

There is concrete evidence of GOP strength among older likely voters in four of the most-watched Senate races, according to surveys conducted in the past two weeks by the Trafalgar Group. In the hotly contested Texas Senate campaign, Republican Ken Paxton was favored in an October 6-8 poll by 60.8% of those surveyed, compared to just 29.8% for Democrat James Talarico. In Michigan, Republican Mike Rogers got 52.5% of the older voters, compared to 44.2% for Democrat Abdul El-Sayed.

Similarly, in North Carolina, the GOP’s Michael Whatley got 52.5% of the older likely voters, while former Governor Roy Cooper got 39.9%. In Georgia, Republican Mike Collins drew support from 54.5% of the older voters, compared to 40.8% for Senator Jon Ossoff, the incumbent Democrat. Finally, in Maine, GOP incumbent Susan Collins drew backing from 51.1%, while her Democratic opponent Troy Jackson got 43%.