LATEST DATA: In AZ and OH, <50% of 18-year-olds are registered to vote (vs. ~80% of older voters)

With less than two weeks before the Oct 7 deadline, 56,000 remain unregistered in Arizona and 87,000 remain unregistered in Ohio

Sep 24, 2024

Last week, we shared new data for New York showing that under 45% of 18-year-olds are registered to vote. Unfortunately, the story is the same in Arizona and Ohio, where the deadline to register to vote is October 7th – less than two weeks away.

This is the ninth of our 2024 Election Season weekly series of Future Voter Scorecards.

We’ll be publishing every week, drilling down to the local level to show where and how young people can make a difference when they register and vote. We’ll be covering the percentage of 18-year-olds who are registered and tracking changes over time.

Facts don’t fix themselves. It’s up to our readers to spread the word; make sure that all the young people you know are registered to vote, and that they help their school communities do the same.

This week (Sept. 23-27) is High School Voter Registration Week. Students in dozens of states, including Arizona and Ohio, are signed up to hold drives. There’s still time for students and educators to attend a free workshop to learn how to run a drive. Teachers can download a free toolkit to learn how to make a difference in their school communities.

And if you keep a running list of democracy emergencies, read on to see for yourself why high school voter registration should be on it. And check out yesterday’s post on what you can do to help.

Arizona

With less than two weeks left before the October 7th registration deadline, our most recent data from Arizona show that only 40% of 18-year-olds are registered to vote.

This is a meaningful 6.5 percentage point jump from our last report with rates as of the beginning of August, but the state should be doing better. An estimated 56,000 18-year olds remain unregistered as of September 19th, in a state where the 2020 margin of victory in the presidential election was just over 10,000 votes. By way of comparison, 80% of those age 45 and above in Arizona are registered.

Ohio

The data from Ohio show a similarly disappointing story: as of September 14th, only 43% of 18-year-olds in the state are registered to vote.

That means an estimated 87,000 18-year-olds are unregistered. While there likely will be some pick-up in registrations leading up to the deadline, this is a tremendous gap to fully close in less than 2 weeks. By way of comparison, 78% of Ohioans ages 45 and above are registered.

See below for detailed scorecards on 18-year-old registration rates in the 10 largest counties in OH and school districts in Cuyahoga and Hamilton counties.