Youth Voting in the 2024 Election

What we know, what we don’t know, and what to do about it.

Reports are still coming out about the 2024 election, and with them, opinions of one sort or another about the role young people played.

My main message right now is that it’s too early to draw conclusions about some of the most important issues concerning the role young people played in this election.

Here’s some of what we believe: 

First, many ballots have not yet been counted. Reports regarding youth participation at this point are based on surveys, like this exit poll from CBS, which seeks to capture both Election Day and early voting. 

Here are the most important youth numbers: 

1. Young people ages 18-29 favored Harris by 11 points.

2. Younger voters, those 18-24, favored her by 12 points.

3. There was a wide split between young men and young women, with young men (18-29) being +2 Trump, and young women in the same age category being +24 for Harris. 

4. There was also a wide split based on race, with young black voters favoring Harris by far more than other young voters.

For our visual learners, here are some charts from the CBS report: 

Here’s what we don’t believe, and it comes from a different survey released by AP/Fox.  That survey found that youth ages 18-29 favored Harris by just 6 percentage points, and it reported dramatically more support for Trump among young men (+14) and lower support among young women (+18) than the CBS exit poll. 

They can’t both be right. 

Exit polls and other surveys are never 100% reliable. But here are some reasons why we believe the CBS exit poll is likely closer to reality. 

1. Exit polls vs other surveys
   The CBS poll is an actual exit poll, i.e., it surveyed voters as they left polling sites during early voting and on Election Day. The AP/Fox survey is not an exit poll, and it draws from a sample both voters and non-voters. Some respondents are paid for participating. 

2. Sample size
   The CBS poll had a sample size about twice as large as the AP/Fox poll, roughly 200,000 vs 100,000.

3. Highly unusual and unexplained results
   The AP/Fox poll showed virtually no difference between 18-29 year old voters (51% Harris/46% Trump) and those 30-44 (51% Harris/47% Trump), which is highly atypical and not explained in its report. The CBS poll showed meaningful differences within the 18-44 age group, which is what we would expect. The AP/Fox survey of Harris being overall +6 with 18- to 29-year-olds is also wildly different from reputable pre-election surveys, which showed young people strongly favoring Harris (+28 points among young likely voters) shortly before Election Day. The AP/Fox survey also offers no explanation for such a radical shift. 

4. Clarity of methodology
   The published methodology for the AP/Fox survey is exceedingly opaque, and if surveyors have to jump through linguistic hoops to explain what they are doing, it’s fair for us to be skeptical. 

We urge youth serving organizations that have relied on the AP/Fox survey to take a second look at their published reports and analysis in light of the CBS results and to update or clarify their reporting if appropriate. 

Finally, I want to give a different warning for readers reviewing reports about overall youth turnout. The fact is that until official voter files or Secretary of State data reports become available, which in some cases will not be for months, we do not know the rate at which young people turned out. 

Beyond timing, when you see reports suggesting that under 50% of youth turned out, it’s important to understand  what that is and isn’t measuring. 

At The Civics Center, for example, our focus is on tackling the problem of low youth voter engagement through high school voter registration programs that focus on the youngest teens eligible to register. Because you can’t have voters without registration. For this reason, our data reports typically focus on registration rates and turnout among registered voters. While we don’t yet have 2024 numbers, we know that in every presidential election between 2004 and 2020, nationally more than 75% of registered youth ages 18-24 turned out. It’s likely the turnout rate among registered youth this time around was not so different. 

Most mainstream media outlets, in contrast, focus on turnout among all citizens. By doing so, they ignore the extent to which young people turn out once registered, and they gloss over the role voter registration can play in holding back or advancing youth turnout. 

So if you see reports saying that only 42% of youth turned out in this election, understand that this is an estimate of turnout among all citizens whether they are registered or not. And it is also based on the same AP/Fox survey referenced above, so if I’ve made you skeptical about that survey, please stay that way. 

Don’t come away thinking it is hopeless to engage youth. A low turnout rate among all young citizens is telling us about multiple challenges at the same time. It’s reflecting registration, education, and motivation at the front end and mobilization at the end.

If you were focused solely on the ultimate turnout rate among citizens, you’d likely dismiss the most obvious and helpful intervention there is: moving up that registration rate, starting with the youngest future voters, starting right when they are coming of age, i.e., in high school. 

Buried in the number is a message that the pro-democracy community needs to hear. Spending billions of dollars for last-minute mobilization to drive young people to the polls, when high school voter registration and civic engagement are radically underfunded resulting in suppressed registration rates, is a misallocation of funds. There’s clearly an arms race to dominate the airwaves, but where is the race for more transformational change? 

These young people, like high school students everywhere, deserve a democracy that welcomes them and in which they can have equal power. 

That’s why we’re not stopping. Just as we did leading to Election Day, we’ll be publishing reliable data based on the best sources (actual voter files, Secretary of State reports, and the American Community Survey). We’ll be drawing attention to perennially low voter registration rates for the youngest voters and the best practices to fix them. And we’ll be letting you know how many of the registered actually turned out as soon as that information is available.

We’ll again be beating the drum again for Cap, Gown & Ballot, our spring campaign that provides training and resources to students and educators with an aim to help them starting now. With four million young people graduating high school every year, and eight million who will be newly eligible to vote in 2026, there is no off year for high school voter registration. 

So, let’s set aside the exit polls and pay attention to what’s in front of us, which is 4 million young people turning 18 every year and wanting a brighter future. 

Let’s be there for them.

The charts below give some indication of the work to be done. You can check out our map showing the different state laws and the opportunity that exists, literally everywhere, to register students before they graduate.

Please consider donating to The Civics Center in support of our ongoing data and organizing work: