Looking at the Youth Vote

June 19, 2024

Photo Credit: Whitney Curtis for The New York Times

This week, a new guide for nonprofits on multicultural youth GOTV that I co-wrote will be released by The Institute for Race, Power & Political Economy at The New School. So I thought we would focus on youth voting in this week’s posts. Today, we’ll discuss some issues related to the youth vote. On Friday we’ll take a look at some new and ongoing organized efforts to maximize youth voter turnout this fall.

It’s fairly well-known that as a voting bloc, youth have some of the lowest rates of turnout. Since 1968, voters between the ages of 18 and 24 have consistently turned out to vote in lower proportions that the overall voter turnout rate and older age cohorts.

One reason that young folks vote in lower numbers is because the barriers to voting are fairly high in this country, even in pro-voting states. Residency requirements are varied, registration deadlines are often too far before an election.¹ Identification necessary to register and to vote can be difficult to obtain when needed – many states do not accept a student ID, for instance.

Then there is the learning curve involved in figuring out how to cast a vote. Where is the correct polling place? Will my schedule allow me to get out on election day and wait a long time in line, if necessary? If I can vote by mail, how do I get a ballot and what happens if I make a mistake on the enveloped when I return it? Can I cure the mistake? Once you have successfully navigated the process, voting becomes much easier. But for the first time voter, it can be confusing. In many states, the system seems designed to discourage people from actually voting. In some cases that is because the system is designed that way. But in others it's just the bureaucratic hoops associated with all sorts of public life.

So it is not surprising that we see young folks turning out to vote in few numbers than older folks. Older folks tend to think this is because young folks don’t have a stake in our democracy, which is insulting in my opinion. The fact is that most older folks who vote started voting sometime within the ages of 18-29 and then became regular voters once they became accustomed to it. What a lot of older voters² did not have to deal with is the increasing voter suppression rules that are currently in place – such as many of the Voter ID laws and the constantly changing polling locations. The challenge is to reduce the barriers that make it so difficult to cast that first vote. If we can do that, young people will turn out in higher numbers.

Despite the challenges, plenty of young people do vote. In the most recent election, CIRCLE reports that the national youth turnout rate was 23%. This is a significant increase over 2014 (13%), but a drop of five points from 2018. The highest turnout states include a number of states that make voting easy, while the lowest turnout states continually make it difficult for people to vote. According to CIRCLE, “Many of the states with the highest youth turnout have policies like automatic and same-day registration that make it easier for young people to register and vote. Many of the states with lower turnout do not have these policies in place or have restrictions like voter ID laws.”

When breaking down the youth vote, CIRCLE finds that white women are the most overrepresented group while Black voters are the most underrepresented group. Young white women turned out to vote in 2022 six points higher than their share of the youth population while Black voters showed up four points lower than their share. Among Black voters, it was men that drove the lower turnout. Young Black women turned out only one point lower than their share of the youth population. Young Hispanic and Asian voters turned out in numbers equal to their share of the population.

Will the youth voter turnout increase or decrease in this year’s election? It’s unclear. First, 2022 was a midterm election and turnout is usually higher in a presidential election. So, in that sense it is almost certain that turnout will be higher. But higher than 2020?³ That’s the problematic methodological question for pollsters. 2020’s turnout was very high for a US election and pretty much all pollsters missed it. That is one reason why polling showed Biden having as much as a ten point advantage, yet he won by 4.5 points. There is a survey that can help us understand the youth voter, but it only has limited ability to tell us how many will show up at the polls in November. The good news is that just as many respondents say they will vote as did in the same survey four years ago.

The Harvard Youth Poll is one of the more comprehensive surveys available on the opinions of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29. The latest survey was in the field in March of this year.⁴

The poll finds that 53%⁵ will “definitely be voting” in November’s general election, which is almost the same at the same point in the 2020 cycle (54%). Biden leads Trump among these likely voters by 56-37. For these topline likely voter numbers, the poll does break out the sample by the 18-24 and 24-29 age cohorts. In the former sub-group, Biden leads by 14 points while in the latter he is up by 26 points.

Among all likely voters, Biden leads young men by six points and young women by 33 points. At this point in 2020, Biden was +35 with young women. However, he was up by +26 with young men which represents a 20 point drop in support for the president since 2020. Democrats had a +22 advantage with young men in the 2020 survey, but just +3 in this one. The percent of women identifying as Democrats increased by six points.

Despite this drop in support for Biden and the Democratic Party among young men, their support for liberal issues remains strong. Young men agree that health insurance is a right and should be provided by the government (60%) and that government should spend more to reduce poverty (54%). These levels of support are similar to those in 2020. The big change is on climate policy. In 2020, 60% of young men agreed that government should do more on climate change even at the expense of economic growth. Now, however, that number has dropped to 47%. Meanwhile, support for these issues has only grown among young women.

While support for institutions is low among young people and only 9% think the country is headed in the right direction, many are not opting out of participation. The poll finds that “[a]mong the strong predictors of whether or not a young American is likely to vote in 2024 are attitudes related to the efficacy of the process, the system, and perceived differences between the parties.” Likely voters strongly disagree that it doesn’t matter who the president is (57%), don’t see a difference between the parties (45%), and that politics is not relevant to their lives (32%). Unlikely voters largely feel the opposite.

This gives us some insight into whether and how young people might vote this fall. The poll has a lot more information on young people’s positions on across a number of issues. I am not sure whether the fall survey results will be available before the election. There will be plenty of polling around that time, but perhaps not many with the insight the Harvard Youth Poll can give us about this particular cohort.

A final thought: There is an important problem with looking at age data in elections. Pollsters and other survey researchers use different methods and reporting conventions when it comes to youth data. CIRCLE’s data for 2022, for example, uses a cohort of 18-29, the same as the Harvard Youth Poll. However, others report smaller age groups (18-24, for example, as used by the US Census) or larger ones (for instance, in some polling I analyzed for a union recently we only used four age groups, with the youngest being 18-35). An apples-to-apples comparison for voting age groups is often difficult – except for the over 65 (or sometimes 65 and up) age group, which is usually a constant in election data reporting. This is an often overlooked factor in the data. Make sure to consider the age range when comparing different survey results.

1. A lot of people do not seriously consider an election until sometime within 30 days beforehand. I have spoken to a number of people over the past 30 years – of all ages, including seniors – on election day who asked me how they could vote. They wanted to, but were not registered. This is why same-day voter registration is so important.

2. Voter suppression laws are nothing new, however. Certainly for Black voters during Jim Crow there were all sorts of barriers to vote. Voter ID laws and other newer forms of voter suppression have been around for a while. However, voters 50 and older - especially white voters - probably have never had to worry about providing an ID, either because they already had one or because no one ever asked them to produce one.

3. Turnout for the 18-24 cohort was just under 50% in 2020.

4. The survey is administered every March and October

5. The sample size was 2,010 Americans between the ages of 18 and 29.