In most states, young people overwhelmingly supported pro-abortion ballot measures, even while voting for GOP President-elect Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, according to a new data analysis of young voters in the 2024 election.

Although young people listed the economy and jobs as the most important issue in the election, abortion came in at number two. This was particularly significant given that more than a dozen states had ballot measures related to protecting or codifying access to abortion rights,

In all states for which Tuft University’s , had reliable data, young voters ages 18-29 overwhelmingly voted in favor of these reproductive rights measures, even as they moved right from the 2020 election, voting for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris by much slimmer margins or — in Florida and Missouri — pulling the lever for Trump. 

In Florida, over half (52%) of young voters cast their ballot in favor of ending the state’s six-week abortion ban, despite voting for Trump by a 10-point margin.

Youth activist and chairman of the Jayden D’Onofrio saw this play out live on Florida State University’s campus on the last day of early voting when he shuttled students to their polling place via golf cart. 

He said he heard from countless young Republicans who voted for Trump — whose Supreme Court nominees were largely responsible for overturning the constitutional right to an abortion — yet also supported Amendment 4. If the ballot measure had passed, it would have established a statewide constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability.

“The first two, three times, it’s like, ‘Oh, OK, that’s interesting. You’re voting for Republicans, but you’re voting yes on four,’” he told The 74. “And then after like the first three times, it was just like, ‘OK, holy crap. You know, how many of you people are there?’ ” 

He largely blames the state Democratic party for this disconnect, arguing they failed to message, motivate, or educate youth voters “on where we stand on this issue and where Republicans stand on this issue, and as a result, [young Republicans] voted antithetical to their own beliefs.” 

He added that this mismatch was particularly prominent among young people who told him Trump was pro-choice as well.

Harris garnered 43% of the overall vote in Florida, and the ballot measure received 57.2% of the vote. The amendment ultimately didn’t pass because it didn’t reach Florida’s 60% threshold. Most states require a simple majority. 

This overwhelming support of pro-abortion rights ballot measures, despite a movement to the right generally in 2024, matches and previous , which found 53% of all young voters identify as pro-choice.

Ruby Belle Booth, a researcher at CIRCLE, said it’s further evidence of an emerging trend in which young conservatives and Republicans are consistently more liberal than older ones on a few key issues such as climate change and abortion.

“With this more conservative electorate, it doesn’t mean that they’re more conservative on every single issue,” she said.

Rhea Maniar, a Harvard University freshman and former chair of the said she wasn’t expecting the “magic wand… miracle” of a Harris win in her home state, but she was cautiously optimistic about the ballot measure.

Ultimately, she was left disappointed by her party’s inability to hit the 60% mark and encouraged leaders to reevaluate their approach to the youth vote generally. 

“There has to be a reason why folks are willing to put Trump on the top of their ticket and then still vote for abortion,” she said. “And I think Democrats are really going to need to take a hard, long look at what’s happening.” 

The ‘frat boy vote’

Youth turnout this year (42%) was lower than the historic turnout in 2020 — more similarly mirroring that of 2016 — except in the battleground states, where it was much closer to the 50% mark. 

“What the turnout in the battlegrounds really shows,” said Booth, “is that when young people are engaged in elections and when there’s a lot of investment in engaging young people in elections they learn to feel like they can make a difference. They feel like their voice matters and they have resources that young people in a lot of other states don’t have.”

The young people who did turn out to vote were significantly more conservative. Young voters backed Harris overall by a mere 4 points (51% to 47%) but gravitated toward Trump compared to 2020, when they gave President Biden a much larger margin (+25). 

The youth electorate was more Republican than 2020 by 9 percentage points, whereas Democratic-identifying youth dropped by five points. It’s not yet clear if this indicates an ideological sea change among the youngest generation of voters or a shift in who turned out to vote, said Booth.

“It just goes to show that there’s so many different kinds of young people out there with so many different priorities,” she said, “and I think for a long time people just assumed that all young people were liberal voters and this election proved that that was not the case. And that’s something we’ve been saying for a really long time — but I think not everybody has been listening.”

One thing she believes is clear this early: young voters were driven by issues. Forty percent of young people chose the economy and jobs as their top issue, and those who did so were about 20 points more likely to vote for Trump. Abortion came in second place, followed by immigration in third — a shift from 2022 when immigration was ranked lower. 

This appears to be a driving factor in the movement toward Trump, who throughout his campaign and is now planning for . Young voters who listed immigration as their top issue supported Trump by a 70-point margin. 

Early data suggests the migration overall is largely attributable to young men, who supported President Joe Biden over Trump by six points, but voted for Trump by a 14-point margin this time around. Among young white men, that margin ballooned to 28 points.

Black and Asian youth overwhelmingly voted for Harris over Trump by the largest margin — about 50 points — while young white voters favored Trump overall (54% to 44%).

The largest shift for any racial or ethnic group of youth between the 2020 and 2024 elections were Latinos, who favored Harris by a 20-point margin this year but went for Biden by a 49-point margin. Young Latino men were 14 points more likely to identify as Republican than they were four years ago, though they still were more likely overall to identify as Democrats.

Youth organizer D’Onofrio, who identifies as “just as a regular, straight white dude who’s 19 years old in Florida,” said he’s seen this dynamic play out among his male friends, the majority of whom are Republicans.

He said he’s started to notice that despite supporting some liberal issues — such as abortion rights — many of these young men have been of hyper-masculinity that “makes them feel good,” which Trump and the Republican party have successfully tapped into.

His peers see Trump going on conservative talk shows, like The Joe Rogan Experience, or engaging with Twitch streamers or billionaire businessmen like Elon Musk. Meanwhile Democrats, he said, are not meeting this demographic where they are, nor do they understand how to talk to them. 

Ultimately, he said, Democrats must recruit strong messengers, with relatable information that they get out on the platforms young men actually engage with.

“It’s the frat boy vote,” he said. “You know, embracing it is unfortunately the way to do it. But by embracing it, you can actively change their minds on it and show that we’re regular people [who aren’t] trying to destroy or dilute their vote.”

Correction: Young male voters favored President-elect Donald Trump by a 14-point margin this year. An earlier version of this story had that number at 28, which is the margin by which young white male voters favored Trump.

This week, Maniar saw Clinton speak again, this time at the Democratic National Convention, the first since Roe was overturned, where she’s volunteering and attending as a guest of .

She’ll be flying straight from Chicago to Boston on Thursday and then moving into her freshman dorm at Harvard University Friday. She plans on studying  government, education and Spanish and continuing her work as a youth organizer.  She’ll also be spending time in Boston Public Schools helping teach civics education and curriculum through Harvard Civics.

This election cycle, Maniar has been particularly motivated to collect signatures for an abortion amendment that will appear on the November ballot in her home state. If passed, Amendment 4 would establish a statewide constitutional right to abortion up until fetal viability, a major shift from Florida’s current law, which bans abortion after six weeks except in rare cases. 

Currently, related to abortion are certified for the 2024 general election, the most on record in a single year. Vice President Kamala Harris, now leading the Democratic ticket, is seen as a particularly and has already done much to win over Gen Z.

In an interview with The 74, Maniar said she thinks these ballot measures can mobilize youth voters, who are feeling particularly energized both by the abortion issue and Harris’s campaign more broadly.  

“I think autonomy right now to young people means a lot, because — especially in this state — we know what it feels like to feel like you have none,” she said. 

In late July, Harris spoke with Maniar’s peers when she made a virtual appearance at the Gen-Z-led Voters of Tomorrow summit.

“We need your support,” Harris said. “In this election we know young voters will be key, and we know your vote cannot be taken for granted. It must be earned. And that is exactly what we will do.” 

Vice President knows she must earn our generation’s votes, and that is exactly what she will do.

— Voters of Tomorrow (@VotersTomorrow)

Days before leaving for the convention where Harris will accept her history-making nomination, Maniar talked politics with The 74’s Amanda Geduld.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

The 74: How did you first get involved with local politics and civic engagement?

Rhea Maniar: When I was 9, my parents took me to a Hillary Clinton rally in Sanford, Florida, in 2016, and they’ve never been the most politically involved people, but they saw that this election was really exciting because it was our first female nominee from the Democratic Party. And they took me in a shirt that said “Future President.” I think ever since that, I’ve just been hooked. 

I actually signed up to volunteer for Hillary Clinton on my own — after my bedtime — on my mom’s computer. I snuck in afterwards, and then they called my mom because I didn’t have a phone, so I just put her phone number, and they’re like, “Can we speak to Rhea Maniar?” And she was like, “You can, but she’s like 9 and in bed.” So I ended up phone banking at a neighbor’s house … and that was kind of my first foray into politics: Me and my mom phone banking together for 2016.

… In 10th grade, I did the Florida Senate Page Program … and then I also met Rep. Anna Eskamani, who kind of became my biggest inspiration and mentor in this process. And she offered me an internship just as I was going into 10th grade, and that internship was life changing for me. It was my first experience on the legislative side.

… That summer was also the summer that Roe v. Wade broke. So that was insane. I was a rising sophomore in high school. I couldn’t drive, but I was at the rallies, and I planned events all centered around really advocating for Roe v. Wade, and that summer was amazing. 

… I spent the majority of my senior year really talking to adults and advocating for the fact that high schoolers are here, college students are here. We’re ready to get the vote out in 2024, but we need adults to really get us the resources.

You mentioned your experience with the Dobbs decision and your response to that. Can you walk me through that a little bit? Do you remember hearing about that decision for the first time, what your immediate response was and what you’ve done around that issue since?

Yeah, when it broke out … I think everyone at Rep. Eskamani’s office was just shocked, but we didn’t have any time to be shocked. It was time to get to work. 

So this meant we jumped into planning the rallies and the events and the speaker panels, and so it was crazy, because we didn’t expect such a large response from the Central Florida community. But sign-ups for our rally and our march were going out the door. So many people showed up. We didn’t know what to do. I think, like, three or 4,000 people showed up, literally, on that day. They just dropped what they were doing to come and we were so grateful for the fact, but also that was our first time really seeing, “Oh my God. People who are not typically involved with these kinds of things are coming out in full force.” There are so many civically engaged people here who this is their first kind of major protest, major rally, major movement. 

…  And so since, we’ve been trying to capitalize on that type of energy, and I think that we’ve been really effective in the fact that abortion access affects everyone — even if you’re a man. I think for a lot of Floridians, this is definitely top-of-mind with the new ballot initiative. 

And so part of our job was explaining the ballot initiative and why it was so important in November to come out and vote … 

What made it so exciting to see this in 2024 is — we knew that abortion was literally the number one issue on top of Florida students’ minds — college students, especially — along with rent and housing and education. But abortion after Dobbs quickly rose to the top of that. 

… The fact that voters will literally have the chance in November 2024 to actually speak their minds on this and make sure that their legislators actually represent them in their best interests, was something that I think is really powerful to a lot of Florida students, and it’s definitely something that we are trying our best to uplift and then make as obvious as possible. 

… Whenever we did voter registration at schools, we would also have petitions for the 18-year-olds, just to make sure that we were really helping to get that ballot on the table and to pass the threshold.

So what will it mean for youth voters that this abortion ballot will be on the ticket this November?

I think it means a lot to youth voters, because with the combination of having such a powerful and energetic candidate at the top of the ballot — obviously Kamala Harris has greatly improved her numbers in polling amongst youth, especially in Florida — I think what that means is a higher chance of success for our down-ballot races, which are obviously just as important. 

Obviously, we have Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who is running against Rick Scott [both Tuesday in the U.S. Senate race]. We have a bunch of really competitive, flippable seats in [state] House districts and Senate districts that are literally right in colleges —UCF [University of Central Florida], FSU [Florida State University] and FAMU [ Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University] in Tallahassee — and so I hope, I am pretty sure — that the abortion amendment has done its job in that we’ve excited these voters, we’ve prepped them, we’ve informed them that so that they know that this year, abortion is on their ballot. 

And I think that in November, we’re going to see record-breaking — or at least higher — turnout amongst youth voters aged 18 to 29 than we ever have seen, because with the combination of abortion, weed [Florida ballot measure to ] and Kamala Harris, I think — and obviously massive outreach efforts on behalf of the Florida High School Democrats and the Florida College Democrats — I think all this combined is just a recipe for success, and I don’t really see it going any other way at this point. And I’m very glad I can say that.

When you’re tabling or giving out petitions, what are you hearing from young people about this ballot measure — and about the issue of abortion, more generally — within this political climate and then also within the context of the upcoming race?

I think in a world where our governor has made the decisions constantly for high schoolers … and we’ve kind of lost autonomy over that — over what our teachers can say in school, what books we can have in school, what’s being taught, what can we take — I think autonomy right now to young people means a lot, because especially in this state, we know what it feels like to feel like you have none. 

And so that’s why the abortion ballot initiative — and just in general … amendments — are so popular …

It sounds like this ballot measure brings a sense of empowerment to a population in Florida that — like you said — feels like their autonomy has been taken away. And I’m wondering, for young people in states that don’t have a ballot measure coming up in November that deals with this issue, what is your message to them?

… My message to folks in states who are passionate about abortion, but don’t know where to start because they don’t have a ballot amendment, is, I’d always say, organize your community. There’s power in numbers. There’s power in voices. All you have to do is start speaking up, whether that’s planning events, whether that’s registering your friends to vote, and whether that’s calling and emailing your representative and knocking down their door. I would say anything helps.

Outside of abortion, what are other issues that you hear young people getting really excited about this election cycle?

I think especially in Florida, rent is a really, really big problem. And so many older folks will come up to me and be like, “Oh, what issues matter to young people?” And most of the time I’m like, “The same issues that matter to you.”

Young professionals are also looking for places to work, jobs and homes … We held a and that was top of mind. Property insurance is a massive deal here — especially to young people who are just getting on their feet, who have a college degree, who need a job and need rent help. Things have become so ridiculously unaffordable for everyone. 

The second priority was abortion. The third one was education, because obviously our public colleges have seen such a major shift with political ideology and the governor trying to get his hands into curriculum. The fourth one is usually always gun control — being the state of Pulse, being the state of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School [scenes of massive shootings in 2016 and 2018]. Especially to our high school students, who have lived high school every year, having to do active shooter drills every two months, I think this is a really top-of-mind issue. 

And Gen Z is one of the most diverse generations in history — racially, ethnically, ideology-wise — and we have a very large population of Gen Z who identifies [as] LGBTQ. And so I think the queer community here is also being very outspoken that their issues are also top of ballot, because Florida has done a very poor job with that. So those are probably top five.

So now a question about you: Will this November be your first election?

Yes, I’m actually old enough to do it in our August primary, so I just did that.

Amazing. And how did it feel to be a first-time voter?

It was so fun. I put the sticker on my computer. I took a picture. I wanted to memorialize this moment. After organizing around so many issues for so long, I felt really good to finally mark my name down on the ballot — and I’m really excited to vote in November.

Organizations like are working to equip Gen Z with the skills to differentiate between what’s real and what’s fake online. 

YVote was founded in New York City in 2017 out of concern for low youth voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election, when only of 18- to 29-year-olds nationwide cast a ballot. The organization is youth-centered and youth-led, with a core team of six that includes two high schoolers. The main facilitator is Mukilan Muthukumar, a senior at Hunter College High School. Since its launch, the organization has worked with over 1,500 students across 70 schools.

Kenisha Mahajan, a YVote alumna and lead facilitator, said that since the organization’s founding, it has expanded to civically engage young constituents beyond just voting. “A lot of people on our team banded together and realized that young people need a lot more empowerment and uplifting and also this connection to resources if we’re actually going to get them out to the polls,” Mahajan said.

Mahajan said the organization planned several sessions and activities for its annual, week-long Democracy Camp this month centered on media literacy, including icebreakers on current events, guided discussions on accessing information and trivia-style games on media bias.

“For young people that might be concerned about [artificial intelligence], we want to give them a platform to air out their concerns when it comes to what AI and media is looking like and talk about their experiences with it,” she said.

Christine Li and Eloise Gordon are peer leaders for the organization. Li is a junior at Millennium Brooklyn High School and Gordon is a senior at West End Academy Secondary School in Manhattan. The high schoolers worked together this spring on a Civil Action Project with the organization about media literacy and misinformation, which they showcased to about 60 students from several schools, adult leaders from voting and human rights organizations and community members during a virtual presentation. They also worked with journalist , co-founder of RANTT Media, to record an of The Roundtable: A Next Generation Politics Podcast titled Media Literacy in a Maelstrom.

“I think the consensus within our group was that media literacy was very important for this time of AI, false information and the 2024 election,” Li said. “A lot of the young leaders in our fellowship were really alarmed by how much false information they were interacting with.”

“When you think about the advent of mis- and disinformation since [then-candidate Donald Trump’s] 2016 tweets … the obvious example I point to is the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which were rooted in mis- and disinformation,” Gordon said.

An analysis from The Brennan Center that Trump’s election-denial scheme that began in 2020, when he was president, is still impacting the voting process four years later. The organization cited the increase in threats and harassment of and restrictive across the country that disproportionately impact voters of color as byproducts of those efforts to overturn the results of the election.

As part of their project, Li, Gordon and other high schoolers brainstormed ways to combat falling for fake information online. One strategy the group implemented is the SIFT method, created by digital literacy expert and research scientist . SIFT stands for: Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage and Trace claims. Li said it’s a simple yet effective way to find biases and connect to original sources.

Another strategy Gordon said they promoted for detecting AI images is focusing on people’s hands, as artificial intelligence doesn’t have fingers and other small details like teeth figured out. In March, a fake of Trump being arrested circulated online. One of the biggest signs that it was bogus was the hands of Trump and the police officers in the image.

The group also discussed social media echo chambers and how easy it is to fall into a cycle of interacting only with information you agree with.

“We are really limited in our ideas, especially by algorithms and the conversations we have … I think if we really want to use social media for good, it’s really important that we seek out these new opinions and ideas,” Li said.

For Gordon, Facebook is the most concerning social media app when it comes to fake news being shared widely, “specifically on the news feed section of the Facebook app. We discussed as a group that the idea of a customized news feed inherently sounds flawed because news obviously isn’t customizable.”

Facebook has been several times over its content, and in 2021, founder Mark Zuckerberg said posts with misinformation about COVID had been removed from the site.

As for Li, she said she believes Trump’s Truth Social app is the most dangerous for mis- and disinformation.

“I think it’s a breeding ground for bias and misinformation because it’s not really fully developed. I think other apps do a much better job with regulating content and having fact checkers,” she said.

Aside from the Civic Action Projects, YVote has initiatives like training youth on canvassing for voter registration and participatory budgeting. The organization won first place and $20,000 in a 2021 citywide budgeting campaign to create community gardens at underfunded public schools.

During the organization’s summer camp, NYC teens are guided to envision what democracy looks like to them and are taught skills necessary to create it. They learn about the history of American democracy, craft proposals on specific issues they’d like to tackle and are encouraged to continue what they’ve learned by creating a research project during the school year. Though students don’t receive extra credit at school, those who participate will qualify for Certificates of Activist Excellence and/or Civic Leadership.

The organization also offers a year-long program called the Change Makers Institute, where facilitators aged 17 to 24 lead high school students in monthly virtual sessions to learn about voting and advocacy. They train students on reading news headlines and how to point out ones that may be fake, disreputable or skewed to the left or right politically.

In addition, the organization encourages young people to explore topics they’re passionate about, such as mass incarceration and school segregation and teaches them how voting can impact these issues.

In April, YVote launched Youth Civic Hub, a one-stop shop for New York City youth to learn where and how to vote, find out who is running for office in their area and get information on civic organizations that they may want to get involved in. The hub is run by a team of seven, six of them college students. 

The offers a civics glossary to break down common terms and an interactive map that allows voters to enter their neighborhood and see which politicians represent their area and what authority they have. The hub also features a directory of nearby organizations, an election portal that can help young people register to vote and an opportunities board for those who want to get involved beyond voting.

A new law changing voting ID requirements makes it more challenging for out-of-state college students to vote.

requires a photo ID to vote — meaning an unexpired Ohio driver’s license, a state ID card, U.S. passport or military card — so out-of-state college students must get an Ohio issued ID card if they want to vote in Ohio.

But getting an Ohio issued ID card would invalidate their driver’s license in another state.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

“Out-of-state college students are really hampered by this bill because the structure of this bill and the photo ID requirements for voting in person really puts out-of-state college students between a rock and a hard place,” said ACLU Ohio Deputy Policy Director Collin Marozzi.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed HB 458, originally introduced by State Rep. Thomas Hall, R-Madison Twp. in October 2021, into law on Jan. 6 and it will go into effect on April 7. This has been called .

But Ohio Secretary of State’s office doesn’t see it that way.

“It’s not problematic,” said Rob Nichols, the press secretary for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose. “It’s not adding additional hurdles or anything like that.”

The new law limits counties to one ballot drop box, shortens the window to request absentee ballot to one week before the election and absentee ballots must be received four days after Election Day. The law also mandates citizenship status on IDs and excludes county-issued veterans’ identification and college IDs from the list of IDs one can use to vote.

Out-of-state college students

The new law specifically puts hurdles in front of out-of-state college students, Marozzi said.

“Out-of-state college students have just as much a right to vote in Ohio as any other eligible Ohio voter,” he said. “What’s at stake is this student population having a voice in their government. It is a fundamental aspect of American life for people to be able to have a say in their government.”

College students live on their college campuses at least nine months out of the year and should be able to easily cast a vote in the county they live in, he said.

Students can use a passport as a photo-ID, but Marozzi questions how many college students have a passport and, if they do, how many bring their passport to college.

If college students don’t want to get a state-issued ID or a passport, their only other option is voting by mail “and we know that can be a very arduous process,” Marozzi said.

“It requires planning ahead significantly, making sure that you are meeting all the request deadlines, and meeting those mailing deadlines,” he said.

The new voter ID requirements “puts out the unwelcome mat” for out-of-state students coming to Ohio, said David Niven, a University of Cincinnati professor in the school of public and international affairs.

“It probably hits college students as hard as any group within the state,” Niven said. “It really becomes a logistical dilemma.”

How Ohio colleges are responding to the new law

Sierra Nathans, a graduate assistant for Bowling Green State University Votes, said college students already complain that the voting process is too difficult.

“This one extra step will make it that much harder for people to want to do it,” she said. “Any steps you add to it are going to make people not want to do it. We should be making it easier (to vote), not harder.

BGSU’s spring semester ends days before Ohio’s May 2 primary election and Bowling Green doesn’t have any ballots on the primary, so Nathans said they are encouraging out-of-state students to vote in their home state for primary elections.

For the Nov. 7 general election, she said they recommend out-of-state students either get an Ohio state-issued ID card or register to vote using their home address and request an absentee ballot.

University of Cincinnati Votes recently hosted an information session for students on the new voting ID requirements.

“They go to school here and they deserve to have the chance to give their opinion on a candidate, an issue, whatever is on the ballot when it comes time since they do go to school here in Ohio as well,” said Callie Buchanan, a 19-year-old UC sophomore from Zanesville. “It can lead to them not knowing what the restrictions are when they go to vote and then they’ll get turned away at the polling place.”

Ohio State University spokesperson Dave Isaacs said the university will develop guidelines for out-of-state students over the summer and is “happy to work with individuals” in the meantime who have questions.

The deadline to register to . Early voting begins April 4 and ends April 30.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

Some 27% of all people ages 18 to 29 cast ballots, more than in any recent midterm election except 2018, according to estimates from Tufts University’s .

“Despite being consistently told that young people do not vote, Gen Z turned out in huge numbers during the midterms,” Santiago Mayer, executive director of the youth-led organization , said in a . “Young people are overwhelmingly pro-democracy and Gen Z showed that we are excited and ready to take part in shaping what we want our future to look like.”

Young people’s ballots overwhelmingly broke for Democrats, who claimed 63% of their vote in U.S. House races. Only 35% favored GOP candidates, exit polling by the revealed. 

President Joe Biden expressed his gratitude on Twitter Wednesday. 

“You voted to continue addressing the climate crisis, gun violence, your personal rights and freedoms and student debt relief. Thank you for making your voices heard,” the president .

In what was widely predicted to be a “red wave” Tuesday night amid rising inflation, Democratic candidates out-performed pre-election polling, picking up a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania and fending off formidable GOP gubernatorial challengers in several states. 

“If not for young people, we have a starkly different result,” said John Della Volpe, director of polling at Harvard Kennedy School and author of , on .

The party in power almost always suffers stark losses in the midterms when the president’s approval rating is low. The question of who will control the U.S. House and Senate remains outstanding as election officials continued to count ballots in Arizona and Nevada going into the weekend and a Dec. 6 runoff election looms in Georgia.

While 63% of 18- to 29-year-olds voted blue, the same was true of only 51% of 30- to 44-year-olds, 44% of 45- to 64-year-olds and 43% of those 65 or older.

“Youth turnout helped the Democrats defy political gravity,” observed Varshini Prakash, executive director of the , a youth organization devoted to stopping climate change. 

The high degree of mobilization came, Prakash argued, despite “massive under-investment” in the issues that benefit the younger generation such as protecting the planet.

Pundits noted that analysts may have failed to accurately factor in young people’s votes in the Election Day leadup because they failed to connect with them.

“Last I checked, young people, they don’t even take calls from their mothers. I can’t imagine they take calls from pollsters,” MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle .

Pollsters were also faulted for missing how potent the abortion issue remained for all voters, even while concerns over the economy gained ground. Jack Lobel, a Columbia University political science major and Voters of Tomorrow’s deputy communications director, the day after the election that his group had done its own polling and knew the loss of reproductive rights was an imperative for young voters.

“We saw that abortion was certainly a top issue. I think young voters recognize that when Roe fell, it may have been the first of many rights to fall,” he said.

Gun violence and the prevalence of school shootings were also key “motivating issues” pushing youth voters to turn out for progressive candidates, said Lamia El-Sadek, executive director of March For Our Lives. It should be a lesson for those running for government office in years to come, she said.

“The pathway to victory for candidates running in 2024 is to make bold commitments — like passing an assault weapons ban, raising the age to buy a firearm and requiring background checks for every gun sale.”

Student debt cancellation may have also pulled young people left. President Biden canceled up to $10,000 for federal borrowers and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients in September, a move that those under 30. However, a U.S. District Court judge in Texas the move on Thursday, putting relief in legal limbo. The federal government quickly appealed the decision. 

Meanwhile, in Florida, voters elected the , as Democrat Maxwell Frost, 25, won the state’s 10th Congressional District with 59% of the vote. Elsewhere in Florida, Republicans saw a near-sweep, including in school board elections.

Here’s how youth showed up in some of the nation’s key races this season, according to the Tufts analysis:

• In Pennsylvania, where Democrat John Fetterman won a U.S. Senate seat by just a 3-point margin, youth ages 18 to 29 preferred Fetterman 70% to 28% 
• In Wisconsin, where Democratic Gov. Tony Evers won re-election also by a 3-point margin, young voters favored Evers 70% vs. 30%
• In Georgia, where the U.S. Senate race went to a runoff with less than 1 point separating the candidates, youth cast ballots for Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock 63% to 36%

In all of those races, the Republican candidates were backed by former President Donald Trump and espoused support in varying degrees for his false campaign to deny the 2020 election results. The strong youth vote was seen as a of those attacks on American democracy and the electoral process young people embraced.

“Young voters were the deciding factors in many close races,” co-founder Eve Levenson said. “We have more than earned our seat at the decision-making table.”

Democrat Katie Hobbs has won the Arizona governor’s race, After a ballot count that lasted almost a week past Election Day, Hobbs, the secretary of state, narrowly beat out far-right Republican election-denier Kari Lake by 19,382 votes with 98% of the votes reported. Lake, a former local TV anchor who made attacks on the media a central part of her campaign, has not conceded and has alleged without evidence that the election was botched. Hobbs’s victory and that of Democratic secretary of state candidate Adrian Fontes are seen as crucial in a 2024 presidential battleground state that has been a focal point of false claims about the 2020 election.

The youth vote could prove consequential for the Arizona governor’s race, which remained too close to call: Democrat Katie Hobbs was barely leading Republican star and former Fox news anchor Kari Lake Wednesday evening in a contest that continued to tighten.

Exit polls show 76% of Arizona voters ages 18-29 cast their ballots for Democrats this year while 20% voted Republican — than in any other battleground state for a group that leans left.

Results may not be known until Friday morning as more than 275,000 unopened ballots are counted, the late Wednesday afternoon. The paper also quoted several GOP consultants who said other recent voter trends in the state could mean more of those votes go to Lake, an unapologetic election denier and a staple in Arizona households for more than two decades. 

Meanwhile, youth voter turnout in the state for years. It climbed 16 percentage points — from 10% to 26% — between 2014 and 2018, and 18 points — from 33% to 51% — between 2016 and 2020, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. 

Records show young Arizonans favored Joe Biden by a 31-point margin in 2020. Biden won the state by the slimmest of leads with fewer than 11,000 votes. Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly won his U.S. Senate race by 2.4 points that year, Tufts found. Kelly of Republican Blake Masters in his re-election bid this year with 51.2% of the vote to Master’s 46.6%

But young people’s loyalty to the Democratic party is not guaranteed, said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, the center’s Newhouse director. While progressive groups have stirred civic engagement among youth as they promote everything from the environment to civil and abortion rights, young people remain underemployed and, in some cases, saddled with debt. Any candidate who promises tax and other financial relief may win a sizable portion of their vote moving forward, Kawashima-Ginsberg said. 

“Just because they voted for Democrats in the past doesn’t mean they always will,” she told The 74. “That straight ticket voting is over for young people.”

Approval of a ballot proposition that would allow undocumented Arizona high school students and other non-citizen residents to qualify for in-state tuition rates at Arizona state universities and colleges had Wednesday, with 50.6% of voters favoring it and 49.4% voting no.

The outcome of the race between Hobbs and Lake, who were separated by Wednesday evening, could be highly consequential for the nation: Arizona will no doubt play a pivotal role in the 2024 presidential election — one in which former President Donald Trump might soon announce his candidacy. 

Hobbs, who has served as Arizona’s secretary of state since January 2019, defended challenges to the 2020 election by Trump and his supporters. This election season she was roundly criticized for her refusal to debate Lake, a poised, polished speaker who had a slight edge going into Tuesday’s election. 

Known for being non confrontational and considered by some to be a poor debater, Hobbs said she made the decision because she did not think her opponent, a conspiracy theorist, deserved to share her views on such a large stage. Lake, a Trump favorite, counts Steve Bannon among her supporters. Her campaign mocked Hobbs, taunting her with the quip, and . 

Lake, who called for over false voter fraud claims, has said she would only accept the results of her own election if they were “fair.” She did not say if she would abide by the voters’ will .

The Senate race in Georgia between Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker will be decided by a Dec. 6 runoff election after both candidates failed to claim at least 50% of votes. Warnock secured while Walker garnered . showed 63% of young Georgia voters casting their ballots for Democrats and 34% going for Republican candidates. For the second election in a row, the Georgia race could decide which party controls the U.S. Senate.

Young voters in Georgia have a reputation to maintain this election season, but 20-year-old Alex Ames is worried. 

In both 2018 and 2020, uncharacteristically high voter turnout among young people — a bloc whose election-day apathy has long been well documented — delivered unmistakable political power. Just two years ago, young voters, and Black youth in particular, were credited with delivering a victory to President Joe Biden, the first Democrat to win the state in nearly three decades. Then, in a runoff race in early 2021, they were an unexpected Senate majority. 

Can they do it again?

Ames, an activist and a junior at Georgia Institute of Technology, has spent the fall leading a workforce of high school and college students who’ve reached out to thousands of friends, classmates and neighbors urging them to vote. Her group, the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition, is one in a crowded field of nonprofits whose get-out-the-vote efforts have led to a surge in youth participation in the last several election cycles. 

Nationally and in Georgia, from the midterms in 2018, the last cycle without the higher turnout generally brought by a presidential election. The national youth voter registration is up 6% over 2018 including in the key battleground states of Arizona, Nevada and Michigan — where voter registration overall has surged by 38%.

Registering new voters is one thing, Ames said, but getting them to cast their ballots early or show up on election day is a hurdle in itself. Georgia’s youngest voters skew heavily Democratic, putting them in sharp contrast to older generations in a state that’s long been a Republican stronghold. 

Pessimistic about the energy levels she’s observed on the ground, Ames said that several factors — including stricter new voting rules and a Democratic party that’s failed to deliver tangible results — have made it more difficult to mobilize young people this year. Unlike nonpartisan get-out-the-vote efforts, her coalition seeks to mobilize students who support liberal causes including abortion rights, gun control, LGBTQ rights and school funding. 

“Certain sections of the Democratic Party have failed to get up to the task of proving to voters that they are worthwhile,” said Ames, the group’s organizing director. “The Democratic Party in the past two years had a very serious opportunity handed to it by voters and volunteers like me who sacrificed literally 70 hours a week working to elect a future where we not only survive, but thrive. And, largely, we got very little out of that.” 

Whether they show up could be decisive. Experts say that youth voter turnout in Georgia remains instrumental to this year’s election outcomes,, especially in a tight Senate race between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker. The race was released last week. Among poll respondents 18 to 29, a meager 18% said they’re definitely voting. Among millennials and Gen Z respondents, 58% said they planned to vote for Warnock compared with 33% who supported Walker. 

Among Senate races nationally, the highly watched Georgia contest is where youth voters are likely to have the most significant impact, by the Center for Information and Research on Civil Learning and Engagement, a think tank at Tufts University. That power comes in part from demographics, with Georgia youth more racially diverse and liberal than their elders. 

While 28% of young people voted in the 2018 midterms nationally, some 34% showed up in Georgia. Two years later, they overwhelmingly supported Warnock and Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. And while 63% of all Georgia voters 18 to 29 supported Warnock in the runoffs, 91% of Black youth supported the Baptist pastor.

Because Georgia youth are predominantly liberal and “have pretty different views from the rest of the population when it comes to politics,” their high turnout has made them “a force to be reckoned with in the state,” said Ruby Belle Booth, an elections coordinator at the Tufts research center known as CIRCLE.

“This is especially true of Black youth, who have an even wider favoring for Democratic candidates,” she said. “Especially when Black young people show up in Georgia, it can cause pretty big shifts in elections. We saw that in the runoffs in 2021.”

That could spell trouble for Walker, who has the unwavering support of former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The former football star made opposition to abortion central to his campaign but has faced who claim he pressured and paid for them to terminate their pregnancies. 

In a national survey of 2,200 students and National Society of High School Scholars alumni, racial equity, abortion rules and the economy ranked among the top issues. Other polls have , and abortion to a lesser extent, among top issues for voters of all ages. 

“I’ve been screaming this from the rooftops and nobody’s been listening, but young people, their top issue is the same as older folks,” Booth said. “There’s a lot of treatment of young people as this weird creature who has to be pandered to in a very specific way, but in reality they have a lot of the same concerns and want people who are addressing those concerns in a way that’s also geared toward them.”

New voter rules in Georgia could also serve to discourage youth turnout, including a shorter window to apply for absentee ballots — an important voting method for college students. Among those who already took advantage of early voting is 18-year-old Kameron Hayes, who lives in Atlanta but attends a boarding school in Chattanooga, Tennessee. 

Racial justice is his top issue, he said, and he’s most attracted to candidates willing to work across the aisle who want “to take the heat and fire out of politics and make it so the average American can understand what’s going on and actually not lose their mind while they’re watching CNN or Fox News.” 

Voting procedures and voter registration has been particularly fraught in Georgia since 2020 when the state became one of the places where Trump by pressuring state officials and poll workers. 

“I really do hope that we move beyond the partisan issues of absentee voting and early voting and look at it for its value because it allows people like me to vote: College students, people who serve in the military, people who work jobs that don’t give them time off to vote,” Hayes said.

Noelia Nava, the Georgia deputy state coordinator at the Campus Vote Project, has been working this fall to improve voter turnout on college campuses. The recent Georgia State University graduate said “a feeling of hopelessness” is a recurring sentiment among young people, but she tries to remind them “that our system may not be perfect but it is the system that we have.” 

As the daughter of undocumented immigrants, she’s experienced that disappointment firsthand. Biden made immigration reform central to his presidential campaign but to live up to his promises, she said. 

“There’s been multiple times where I have feared that my mom or dad might be deported every time they step out of the house and that is something that is very scary and I’m not the only one who goes through that,” she said. “I do think that Latino voters, specifically Latino youth, should come out and vote for whoever we believe is best to make immigration reform happen.”

To capture the attention of young people, Democrats need to stand for more than being the opposition party to Trump, Booth said. While Walker’s Senate campaign has been defined by scandals , the issues motivating young people are “less ‘Oh these people are crazy,’ because their introduction to politics was Donald Trump their introduction was insane.” 

Instead, young voters want candidates to demonstrate how they’ll improve their lives, Booth said. They’re falling short. 

“It’s hard for young voters — especially if they voted for the first time in 2020 and they were told they were powerful, they broke records — to look around and be like, ‘OK, the child tax credit was pretty nice and we got some cool stuff out of that,’ but I’m not seeing it with my eyes,” Booth said. “ ‘I’m not feeling it. I don’t feel powerful.’ ”