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Photo credit: Getty Images, via Forbes, November 10, 2022
Perhaps the biggest opportunity for Democrats to hold the White House and win Congress next year is increasing the turnout among young voters, particularly those under the age of 45. Holding their support, however, is perhaps the party’s biggest challenge. Even so, youth turnout has plenty of room to grow although there are signs that young voters are getting discouraged from participating.
Why are young voters so important? We saw large increases in youth turnout in 2018 and 2020 as Gen Z came of voting age. This turnout helped drive Democratic victories in those years, even as the 2020 Republican turnout was higher than it appeared at the time. In 2020, youth voters help Biden win several important battleground states that put him over the top in the Electoral College. Biden won the 18-29 age group in Arizona by 22 points, Georgia by 19 points, Michigan by 26 points, Pennsylvania by 20 points, and Wisconsin by 19 points, while losing voters aged 45 and older in each of these states.1 The significant support young voters have given Biden and the Democrats more generally is a major reason why some Republicans are calling to raise the voting age. But recent polling suggests Democrats might have some problems with the youth vote next year.
A recent Harvard Youth Poll found that young Black folks (aged 18-29) are moving away from the Democrats with a 15 point drop in support since 2019. Republicans only saw an improvement of about three points, with a 13 point increase to Independent. Among young Hispanics, the change is less dramatic: a six point drop in support for Democrats with a four point gain for Republicans. Young Blacks who say they are definitely voting in the next election has dropped from 50% in 2019 to 42% in 2023. For young Hispanics it is nearly the same, dropping from 51% to 42%. As for ideology, young Blacks have seen a nine point increase in those describing themselves as Moderate, but much of that seems to have shifted from Conservative (-6 points) than Liberal (-2 points). Young Hispanics have seen a four point gain for Conservative while the numbers of those identifying as Moderate and Liberal remain essentially unchanged.
This is something that Democrats must be concerned about, but I am usually skeptical of making a direct connection between how voters say they feel about candidates, parties, and issues a year out from an election to how they will actually vote when faced with a real-world choice. Data from the Harvard Youth Poll suggests young Blacks and Latinos are less likely to vote than they were two years ago, but also that they support progressive ideas. So, what will that mean when the election is in front of them? It seems clear who they will likely vote for, but the problem for Democrats is making sure they actually vote.
While the data show some movement away from the Democrats - perhaps toward Republicans, but more likely to Independent - and away from “liberal” to “moderate,” it also shows increasing and strong support for the proposition that the government should be doing more to help with housing, health care, and other issues. In fact, youth support for universal health care, the right to shelter and food, government spending to reduce poverty, and prioritization of climate change over economic growth (all of which is now over 50%) has grown since 2018 (and substantially since 2013). The increases in support for these issues has grown not just among all young voters, but in subgroups among white voters, Black voters, and Hispanic voters. It’s a mixed bag, in my opinion, but it’s not something we should ignore.
This suggests that Democrats have a mobilization problem with these groups rather than an ideological problem – although it certainly seems like there may be an increasing rejection of the old, centrist voices in the party from younger voters. The polling suggests Gen Z voters are more motivated by ideas than the "transactional politics" that motivates many older voters. In fact, Millenials do not seem to be getting more conservative as they age, which flies in the face of the voting behavior of prior generations. One reason, as The Financial Times noted last year, may be that the benefits older generations reaped - reliable and well-paid employment, affordable homeownership, education, and health insurance, and pensions/retirement security - are simply out of reach for young people today.
The polling represents a warning sign for Democrats, but organizing can help overcome some of this. I am not sure it is the kind of organizing Democrats want or are willing to do, so it will be up to community and labor organizers and other advocates to once again do the job for them. The problem is that - and I can speak from personal experience here - it is getting harder and harder to convince young people why voting for Democrats matters. Pointing to the opposition and saying, “we have to stop them” (which is absolutely true) really strikes some young people as bullshit after three election cycles of the same message. It’s a fair point.
Whatever the mixed signs in the polling data may be telling us, there are good signs for Democrats in the actual elections that have been held since 2020. ABC News reported that in the three dozen or more special elections since 2020, the party has been overperforming by an average of ten points. That is a good indicator that the Republicans are in a lot of trouble with voters right now. It's no guarantee that it will be true next November - and the voter suppression efforts out there are so extreme we may have another constitutional crisis in January 2025. But it's a good sign that Biden and Democrats have more support out there than media headlines would lead you to believe.
Tuesday’s election result in Ohio is another indicator that it is Republicans not Democrats who are in trouble right now. The politics of abortion has created all sorts of blowback in red states for them. Last summer, Kansas voters supported abortion rights in a landslide victory. Even though yesterday’s vote in Ohio was not explicitly about abortion, it was an attempt by Republicans to make it near-impossible to amend the state constitution in advance of a November ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights into the constitution. While certainly some voters who may oppose abortion rights voted against the attempt to raise the popular vote threshold for passing a constitutional amendment from 50%+1 to 60% for reasons unrelated to the coming November vote, most voters understood the election as a Republican ploy to undermine November’s vote.
There is another reason for what Republicans were doing: they are losing over and over again on ballot measures. Republicans have wielded nearly-dictatorial control over the states where they have even just barely won power. With voter suppression and state-level gerrymandering making state legislatures less and less representative of the overall electorate, people are going directly to the voters for change. And they are winning. As it their wont, instead of moderating their views to land somewhere in the middle of where people actually are, Republicans want to change the rules on ballot measures. Just like how in response to young voters overwhelmingly supporting Democrats in election, some want to raise the voting age.
But in Ohio, the Republican ballot measure lost by 14 points! Polling had shown the race to be a dead heat, but with a significant number of undecideds. As we have discussed here in the past, when it comes to presidential elections, the voters who are still undecided in the last week tend to break for Republicans. In ballot measures, we see a tendency of these voters to break towards the status quo – that is, to keep things the way they are. So, it is difficult to suggest that this may show that the presidential undecideds will break to Biden next year, but it remains a significant defeat for Republicans in what is now a solidly red state.
As it stands now, we continue to see good news for Democrats in the post-2020 election trends. But the polling we are seeing among young voters, particularly young voters of color is troubling. Democrats need to step up investment in organizing and mobilizing these voters – and that includes some more forceful pushback on the institutional obstacles – such as the filibuster and the Supreme Court – the right wing uses to prevent the policy choices most Americans now support. The gerontocracy in both parties underplays the existential threat of climate change and seemingly does not care about the unprecedented levels of economic inequity that is increasingly making young folks feel like they will never be free of debt, get a job that pays a fair wage, or own a home. With the electoral indicators suggesting next year could be a real opportunity for the Democratic Party to beat back the right wing, it would be arrogant and likely self-defeating for the party to ignore or downplay the concerns of young voters of color.
Biden’s advantage among voters aged 30-44 was in the single digits in each of these states.