FP contributor Bronwen Everill is a historian who teaches writing to first-year students at Princeton University and who lives—and votes—in Philadelphia. I asked her to take the temperature of young people on campus and in her electorally significant hometown on Election Day and beyond. Here’s what she had to say:
“Despite news reports of high anticipated youth voter turnout, with lines stretching for hours at universities in the swing state of Pennsylvania, the number of young registered voters in Pennsylvania actually declined by 6 percent between 2020 and 2024. Tufts University estimates that, overall, only 42 percent of young voters aged 18-29 went to the polls in 2024—the lowest youth vote since 2000.
FP contributor Bronwen Everill is a historian who teaches writing to first-year students at Princeton University and who lives—and votes—in Philadelphia. I asked her to take the temperature of young people on campus and in her electorally significant hometown on Election Day and beyond. Here’s what she had to say:
“Despite news reports of high anticipated youth voter turnout, with lines stretching for hours at universities in the swing state of Pennsylvania, the number of young registered voters in Pennsylvania actually declined by 6 percent between 2020 and 2024. Tufts University estimates that, overall, only 42 percent of young voters aged 18-29 went to the polls in 2024—the lowest youth vote since 2000.
Students from several different universities in the state or nearby that I spoke to over the past weeks expressed this disinterest in the election. Several voted because it was their ‘civic duty’ and certainly among those who turned out and waited in line, or sent in their first mail-in ballot, there were high levels of enthusiasm. But for others, the high temperature of political debate amongst friends or family and a desire to ‘just stay out of it’ seemed to be disincentives to voting.
Since 1971, when the voting age was lowered to 18, youth turnout has only exceeded 50 percent three times: in 1992, in 2008, and in 2020. The high U.S. turnout in 2020 reflected broader global trends in youth activism. In Nigeria, for instance, after the EndSARS protests in the summer of 2020, 76 percent of newly registered voters were young people. But by the 2023 Nigerian election, total turnout was low, reflecting distaste for the increasingly heated rhetoric, concerns about violence, as well as low trust in both the system and candidates.
One consistent trend across elections and in different countries is that the youth vote’s decline seems particularly associated with a perception of trust in the political process to deliver on broad ideological promises. But before strategists start pointing fingers at the youth, it is worth noting the long history of the moral panic that the ‘democratic future of the nation is being eroded among the young’—as one Pennsylvania newspaper reported in 1992, just before the highest turnout in 20 years.”
This post is part of FP’s live coverage with global updates and analysis throughout the U.S. election. Follow along here.
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