About 3% of American 'Supervoters' Could Decide the Midterms. Are You One of Them?

Here’s the scenario: You and four friends are deciding where to eat. Two want pizza. Two want sushi. Everyone turns to you. You have one vote, the same as everyone else, but yours is the one that decides dinner. Your vote has more power.

This fall, something like that is true for about 3.3% of eligible American voters. Just 8.7 million people out of 266 million eligible adults will have more power to decide this year’s midterm elections than the rest of us. The difference from the friend group scenario is that these people with decisive power frequently don’t realize it. In fact, they may have doubts about whether they should even bother to vote.

That’s where U26.vote – a new technology that aims to shed light on voting power in a novel way – comes into play. From only a person’s ZIP code and birth year, U26.vote instantly reveals the power of their vote relative to the typical American voter.

Under the hood, the tool uses data science to determine the political, situational, and demographic factors that impact voting power. Then an algorithm translates each voter’s relative advantage into a score.

U26.vote was developed by my company, Action Tank, and we’ve partnered with Vote.org – the largest voter registration platform in the country – to distribute the tool to voters at scale. For voters looking for a reason to show up this fall, we believe it could be a game changer.

Four factors determine a voter’s power.

Geography comes first: Of the 435 House districts, only a few dozen remain truly competitive, and in some states a competitive Senate race sits on the same ballot. Eligible voters in those districts have the most influence on the outcome of the 2026 midterms, so they see a score bump relative to the projected closeness of their race(s).

Age comes next. Young voters are a large and growing share of the electorate, but they skip midterms at far higher rates than older voters, so each young voter who does show up counts for more. The size of the population of each age group in the district, as well as their historic voting turnout rates, are the levers here.

A third factor is redrawn Congressional district maps. New district lines mean unfamiliar candidates and confusion about voting mechanics, which can depress turnout and raise the importance of every ballot cast in the affected areas.

Finally, the risk of voter suppression is considered. In contested districts where fear or misinformation about voting rules are more likely to keep a significant number of people home, every ballot cast carries more relative weight.

Across the country, U26.vote reveals some striking disparities in voting power. In some states – like New York, which allows people who own multiple homes to decide where they want to vote – the tool makes comparing those options easier with data. College students may also have this option and can compare scores at their home address versus their one at school. Student voting rules vary by state, but Vote.org's tools help voters check what applies to them.

A Baby Boomer in California's 11th District scores a 1.0x – this reliable voter-type in an uncontested race gets the baseline score that everyone earns just by living in a democracy. But in Ohio's 9th District – a race projected to be decided by about one percentage point that sits down ballot from a competitive Senate contest – a Gen Z voter has a power score of 26.2x. The power of that voter ranks in the top 0.2% nationally.

Check your voter registration status and find your polling station with AllSides’ 2026 Midterm Election Center.

A voter discovers their vote has real power. Now what?

Billions will be spent this fall persuading Americans to vote for one candidate or another, with nearly all of it aimed at people who vote reliably. Young voters, who are less likely to turn out in midterms, tend to be under-targeted in these campaigns, so those messages often don’t reach them.

To help fill that information gap for voters who find their vote has power but aren’t sure how to use it, U26.vote also provides a short seven-question survey on current high-profile topics like clean energy, healthcare, and ICE deportations that maps the user to the candidates on their ballot who most closely align with their values.

Every vote counts, and most Americans already know it. Millions show up every election, across every district, because they care about the races up and down their ballots, the measures that shape their communities, and the simple idea that democracy works best when everyone takes part. That commitment is the foundation of our democracy, wherever a voter lives.

But not everyone feels that same pull to the polls, especially for the midterms, which have seen chronically low turnout rates. A tool like U26.vote unlocks a different incentive for a different kind of voter, and that’s what Vote.org and Action Tank are leaning into.

Ben Bilbrough is the co-founder and CEO of Action Tank, which utilizes AI and data science to help nonprofits achieve their missions. He has also founded and exited several other startups, including Addy.co, which was acquired by GroundTruth in 2022.

This piece was reviewed and edited by AllSides’ Managing Editor Andy Gorel (Center bias).