Young Voters: The Key to Victory

It’s June and we know enough to say that President Biden faces significant challenges to be reelected.  But it is eminently doable, and the key is going to be courting demographic groups that strongly supported him in the last election - Black, Latino and young voters – and getting them to the polls.  Today, we focus on young voters.

Roughly 2.6% of the United States population has reached voting age since the 2020 presidential election – adding more than 17.2 million potential voters to the electoral landscape. Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2013) represents a massive-and-growing voting group. Without Gen Z votes, Donald Trump would certainly have been reelected in 2020. This constituency is already roughly 34 million strong - and in the next two election cycles, will grow to represent a group of more than 68 million Americans of voting age.

In the 2020 Presidential election, the support of young voters for Joe Biden was a key to his victory, particularly given the thin margins in battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Young people voted for Biden by a wider margin than any other age group.  In 2024, the turnout and voting behavior of young voters could determine who wins! What do we know? 

Young voters used to be unreliable, unlikely voters. Not so, anymore. Thanks to the impact of social media and the seismic shifts in the US political landscape, America’s youth are rallying together and making their voices heard and they vote. Roughly 50% of young people voted in the 2020 presidential election, up from 39% in 2016. 

The Harvard Youth Poll Spring 2024 by the Institute of Politics reports:

• More than half of the 18-29 age say they will definitely be voting. 
• Compared to this time period before the 2020 election, Biden’s lead over Trump has declined by 10 percentage points.
• Only 9% of young Americans say the country is headed in the right direction.
• President Biden’s job approval among young Americans is 31%.
• Young people indicate the lowest levels of confidence in most public institutions since the survey began. 

A Brookings publication from February 27, 2023 stated the challenge:

“If Democrats don’t run campaigns that focus on voters under 45, wherever they live and whatever their current political preferences, they could not only lose their chance for a sweeping victory in 2024 but potentially lose the allegiance of the large and growing majority of American voters for decades to come.”

The chart below (based on 2022 data) breaks down the numbers - those aged 18-25 in 2022 represent just half of Gen Z but still, their ranks dwarf the leads that handed key swing states to Biden in 2020.

For many of us, it’s hard to understand how support for Biden among young voters has eroded, given both his accomplishments and the alternatives offered by Trump. But it has.  Even while the GOP seems eager to take contrary positions on many issues that young voters care about, they don’t credit Biden for what he has accomplished on issues like climate change, student debt relief, reproductive rights, and support for LGBTQ rights, to name a few.  

But polls show that other issues like inflation, housing costs, immigration, the war in Gaza and their perceptions about his age are of deep concern to this critical voting bloc.  More broadly, we believe that the current decline in support for Biden reflects a belief that we have heard from young leaders that most politicians generally do not listen to them or understand their concerns.  Remember “the generation gap” when we were young. 

A University of Chicago poll taken in the middle of May found that just one-third of all young Americans said they would back Biden, only two points higher than supporters of Trump.  Significantly, a third of respondents said that their current intention is to back a third-party candidate or “someone else”.  Approximately 33% Young Black voters supported Biden while 23% favored Trump (significantly less than in 2020), while 32% and 28%, of young Latino voters favored Trump over Biden, respectively.

There is a lot of work to do with young voters between now and election day. 

Candidate and Party campaign organizations are going to be doing their best to win the votes of young voters.  But the groups that can best reach and influence young voters are the grassroots groups P4D has been supporting that have been working year-round to educate young voters as to the importance of voting. Led and staffed by young people themselves, they understand the strategies and tactics most likely to influence young voters to turn out.

You will learn about this on July 9 at 7:00 PM (EDT) when Congressman Jamie Raskin headlines our Special Event on Young Americans: Engaged or Uninterested in 2024?  Campus voting activists will hone in on the issues their classmates care about and recent polling data will from CIRCLE, the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, will be discussed  And we will introduce you to a new group we are supporting that is working to register young voters in target states. 

You can REGISTER HERE for this event.

In the meantime, if there are young voters in your family or among your friends, take the time to talk to them about the election.  Advise them to look at each candidates’ entire platform and not to be motivated by their stand on the issue of the day.  Moreover, remind them that not voting, or voting for a third party, “to send a message” is essentially casting a vote for Trump. It may feel good for the moment, but they will have to live with the repercussions years to come.

Isn’t time YOU got involved?

The Power Is In Our Vote