Youth Voting in the 2025 Election
After the 2024 election, conventional wisdom said youth had “shifted to the right.” 2025 says: not so fast.
You remember all the articles and talk after the 2024 election about a purported shift to the right among young people. I heard the most depressing sentiments at the time about high school voter registration. Some said young people had let them down. Others said they would no longer invest a dime in helping them get registered and participate in democracy. Others said they were giving up on nonpartisan voter registration altogether.
Leading up to that election, The Civics Center saw something very different on the ground: young people excited to make their voices heard, engage their friends, and talk about the issues that matter most to them. So I made a commitment to them. We’re not giving up on you.
I wrote then (one of our most-read posts), that the purported shift was far less monolithic than many were suggesting. You can read the post about the presidential race here and about the senate races here.
The changes compared to prior presidential races, I argued, demonstrated less an inexorable change in young people than an imbalance in the efforts and impact of the parties in trying to reach them with messages of persuasion. And the youth support for Democratic candidates in close Senate races was far greater than it was for Harris in states that were close in the presidential election.
2024 was an aberration in many ways. With no competitive primaries, there was simply less time for young people to gear up and learn about the presidential race than in recent past presidential races. Only 44% of 18-year-olds for example were registered, compared to 47.5% in 2020, and 79% of 45+.
The “youth shifted to the right” narrative took hold in ways that have damaged efforts to welcome up-and-coming voters. But 2025 represents the beginning of a new narrative. CNN reports of exit polls, excerpted below, provides the details.
California Issue 1:
New Jersey Governor:
Virginia Governor:
To me this message is clear. 2025 has demonstrated that large numbers of young people care about democracy and they don’t want to see it vanish.
Does this mean that the rise of authoritarianism, well documented in a recent NY Times opinion piece, is over? Of course not.
But it does refute the idea that giving up on educating young people about democracy and helping them engage with voting is a good strategy. What it tells me is that the future of democracy rests on young people being educated, empowered, and entrusted to protect it with their votes. Let’s help them help us in standing up for democracy.
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