More Americans under 30 say they'll vote this year than in 2010 and 2014, poll shows

Voter turnout among young Americans tends to be embarrassingly low, but this year, things may be different.

In a new poll conducted by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, 40 percent of voters under 30 said they will definitely turn out for the midterm election this year, The Washington Post reports. That may not seem like a lot, but it's up from the last two midterms. For comparison, in 2014, only 26 percent of young voters said they would definitely vote.

Among Democrats, 54 percent said they will definitely vote in the midterms, and 43 percent of Republicans said the same. The Washington Post notes this number for young Republicans is actually higher than it was in 2010, which was the year the party took control of the House and the Senate.

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These poll results are despite the fact that early voting numbers for young people in some states aren't very impressive; for instance, in Florida, just 5 percent of the votes cast so far have come from voters between ages 18 and 29, reports Politico. But in the new survey, just nine percent of respondents who said they will vote this year said they planned to do so at a location set up for early voting.

Harvard University's Institute of Politics conducted its poll by speaking to 2,003 Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 from Oct. 3-Oct. 17. The margin of error is 3.18 percentage points.