Do young people care about voting?
If you’re under 35, you may have gotten some variation of this question once or twice in the past year. Most people can’t agree on a consensus. Some think it’s X, the everything app that’s making the youth apathetic, or the TikTok, the Chinese spy app. Or that we don’t understand the fundamental freedoms that America offers like a 72 oz. Big Gulp or colorful vapes.
It’s not that superficial. Yes, we do care about voting. You can stop reading now.
Just kidding.
While my generation cares about voting, it’s not in the way pollsters, politicians, journalists or older generations think. And rather than falling in line with dated, limiting ideas of what national politics is, young voters are demanding more from Democrats. Even in the face of continued dismissal from the party establishment, young Americans are pushing the envelope on our most important issues.
Traditionally a key support in the Democratic coalition, the youth vote is less represented than ever in the Harris campaign. Traditionally right-wing policies like fracking and the border wall have become leading talking points for her campaign as the youngest members of the coalition are left outside the tent.
Her unequivocal support for Israel’s slaughter in Gaza has been challenged on an electoral level in Michigan, and yet she’s refused to take any meaningful action to quell the killing. Young activists protested her climate policy in front of Brentwood home before being arrested and she’s refused to budge an inch.
Not only has she failed to gesture towards our concerns, the party has shown outright contempt for bringing them up. As though young people should fall in line solely because she’s not Donald Trump.
On a national level, America’s youngest voters are motivated not by compelling policy on our important issues like health care, climate change and demilitarization but rather an ominous hypothetical.
One crisis leads to another and, despite well-organized campaigns to get action on the most salient issues—namely climate change, demilitarization and health care as a right—little changes from Democrat to Republican.
The failure is not at the foot of young voters demanding more. It’s the fault of America’s politicians and both parties that are entirely beholden to defense contractors, private insurers, and energy companies.
A brief history of the youngest voters
It’s worth looking at when the idea of “young voters” became so popular and how America’s youngest eligible voters have historically swung.
I’ll cut to the chase, usually Democrat.
The “youth” as a political force stems from San Francisco in the 1960s. Many people have written many in-depth looks at the Bay Area in the 1960s (Malcom Harris’s Palo Altois among the best in my view) but the current ideation of young people as a political force came to the forefront during the upheaval of that era.
Unwashed longhairs flocked to the Bay from across the country to chase some vague idea of freedom spurred by the Beats, the Merry Pranksters and LSD. Their protests for freedom of speech and Civil Rights as well as the organizing against the Vietnam War eventually coalesced into a coherent political block demanding change.
But it wasn’t until 1971 that America granted 18-year-olds the right to vote—a bit ironic considering 18-year-olds had been dying in Vietnam for a few years at that point.
Through the 1970s young voters were split between Republicans and Democrats. In 1980, the kids swung hard for Regan’s dopey America First project but by the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s, young Americans were drawn to Democrats.
According to the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, there was a distinct drop in 1992 and 1996 (Clinton wasn’t all that popular with the youth I guess, surprising though that may be). Notably, 1992 also marked an “economic downturn” as it’s called, marked by a drop in national GDP and a stark rise in unemployment leading up to the election.
Progressively though, those damn kids got back out there, per info from the for-profit database Statista, owned by Ströer, the massive German advertising firm. The percentage of 18-24 year-olds voting increased incrementally over the first two elections of the new millennium.
Another dip from 2008 to 2012 — seems unclear why because nothing major like a global recession happened during that period — before climbing steadily to a high point of 48 percent of registered voters ages 18-24 showing out in 2020. The trend was up in every age group that year, as though some cataclysmic political shift occurred between 2016 and 2020 (like the election of a right-wing reality TV star to America’s highest office).
Pew Research Center gets more granular, showing that the under 30 crowd was out in small numbers for Democrats in the 2018 and 2022 midterms, as well as a larger contingent in the 2020 general election.
That said, the idea of “young voters” has been tossed around as an amorous political buzzword for as long as I’ve been alive with increasing fervor in recent elections. It’s unclear exactly who Tucker Carlson or Jake Tapper are referring to when they say it, and the phrase seems like a catch all for anyone, conservatively, under 35 or more liberally, anyone beneath the ripe age of 43ish.
In general, the term “young voters” is deployed cynically by politicians or pundits alike in an attempt to engage the college kids and young professionals. Whether or not that attempt works is more related to the conditions of the country rather than the politicians or parties on offer.
Young voters now
Recent polling data highlights two noteworthy trends. For one, young voters swing more towards Harris. Second, young voters who put stock in national elections have already made up their minds long before the ballots are cast.
A brief analysis of more recent polling highlights that the youngest voters still tend to swing Democratic. A Tufts survey prior to the 2024 election categorized 51 percent of Americans ages 18-24 were likely to vote and 62 percent of voters ages 25-34 were likely to vote. Critically though, this survey highlights that of those groups, more than 70 percent voted in 2020 and more than 85 percent voted in 2022 during the midterms post Dobbs decision.
A recent Harvard study of 18-29-year-olds goes a bit further, noting that Harris has a “commanding 31-point lead over former President Donald Trump among likely voters in a multi-candidate matchup” with 74 percent of young Democrats confirming they will “definitely” vote for Harris.
The data from both of these, taken with the Pew Research analysis from early October on the Harris-Trump matchup provides a more nuanced understanding than “the kids don’t vote.” According to the Pew data, 82 percent of voters are certain they support Harris or Trump.
All of this highlights that while the youth vote is still dependably Democratic, Harris’s policies are not engaging larger portions of the electorate.
With that in mind, Democrats are betting that they already have enough voters on their side to win the election. An assumption that, beyond being arrogant, seems to undermine the crux of the “orange man bad” argument.
Kids run the show
The Democratic Party’s failure to engage swathes of new young voters has spurred grassroots organizing.
Despite this Democratic administration’s commitment to Israel’s right to defend itself the Uncommitted movement — made up largely of young students across East Lansing and Ann Arbor — pushed back in Michigan during the primary. Now, those same young activists are expected to bend the knee to the Harris campaign without any meaningful policy change.
This reflects a fundamental expectation among Democratic Party officials that young voters will fall in line. Faced with a choice between a senile predator and a reactionary prosecutor, the kids will likely vote for Harris.
While this is correct in some states, what’s more remarkable is that the Democratic Party is willing to make that bet. The arrogance that young voters will simply fall in line because they have nowhere else to go is a risky wager, but the reasoning is clear.
The Democrats — ostensibly the opposition to pro-business Republicans— cannot engage with the youth driven left-wing of its own party. Doing so would undermine the corporate relationships the party has been rebuilt on in the wake of the mid-1970s shift away from organized labor.
For example, three of Kamala Harris’ top 10 donors contributors during the 2024 cycle are Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital and Alphabet Inc., according to the non-profit Open Secrets.
Thus, young voter concerns are dismissed out of hand. Rather than accept our fate and march along with the rotten Democratic party, young people are forcing the issue.
In the face of overwhelming corrupt capture, people of my generation and younger are pushing back against feckless politicians and rotten political parties with grassroots organizing. In the Bay Area, Jewish Voices for Peace, AROC and other non-profits have spent the past year plus demonstrating and protesting against the Americans and Israeli holocaust in Gaza.
Eighteen of the 26 protestors from the April march were charged with misdemeanors and felonies on Monday, Oct. 21. It’s worth noting that SF DA Brooke Jenkins’ Director of Public Affairs Lilly Rapson was a former director at AIPAC from August 2016 to May 2019.
Extinction Rebellion, an international environmental justice group, has organized occupations at the corporations funding and insuring fossil fuel extraction.
Workers at medical centers across the Bay Area have organized strikes to fight for better health plans and equitable living conditions.
While these push backs against America’s political failures are meaningful, they’re not enough to enact the changes necessary to make life for future generations equitable, or even prosperous. The existing parties and politicians will not bend the knee to the will of the people, as we’ve seen.
To force the issue politically requires organization among coworkers, across international lines. A hefty project to be sure but one that, with the advent of instant communication and connectivity, is not impossible.
Beyond misty eyed idealism, a better future for our generation is not just possible, it is the only other option. The true losers of America’s shift rightward are not the grizzled boomers or corny Gen Xers but the youngest Americans who will have to live with that awful future. We can make something better for ourselves, but only by working together.
