Young voters gave Democrats a big surprise in 2024 — and not a pleasant one.
While about 55 percent of young voters backed Democrats, according to a Washington Post average of post-election data, Republicans made major gains with the demographic, which has long been seen as left-leaning. Donald Trump won 46 percent of voters 18 to 29, a nine percentage-point increase over his 2020 numbers, according to The Post’s post-election data average.
Ahead of the 2026 midterms, Democrats tried to figure out what went wrong, and how to win those voters back, hoping they might help the party recapture the House and Senate.
“The 2024 election results are representative of the fact that we were doing this wrong for a very long time,” said New York state Sen. James Skoufis (D), who chairs a DNC initiative to engage young voters.
Democrats offered voters a variety of pitches in 2024, ranging from promises to protect abortion to dire warnings about Trump’s plans. Some Democrats argued that the economy was in better shape than many voters said it was; inflation remained elevated, but the Biden administration stressed the country’s strong employment numbers.
Skoufis said that in trying to tailor these messages to young voters in 2024, Democrats were too focused on appealing to voters in college, and ignored the concerns of other voters under 30.
“We were treating this cohort as a monolith,” Skoufis said. “A message to an 18 to 21-year-old is very different than a 29 to 30-year-old who’s starting their family and has to start thinking about buying a home and child care and everything else.”
Throughout the campaign, Trump made a special effort to reach out to young men, going to sporting events and appearing on more than a dozen podcasts popular with the demographic — a strategy he credited to his children, especially his youngest son, Barron, who was 18 at the time.
“He tells me about all the hot guys, people I never heard of,” Trump told Fox News in 2024, referring to Barron.
Like Democrats, Republicans made several arguments to voters, but one the party focused on heavily was the cost of living — and more than any of Democrats’ rhetoric, that message resonated.
As they parsed the 2024 results, a group of party officials at the Democratic National Committee saw that the most important issues for young Americans in 2024 were inflation, health care and housing, per a Harvard Institute of Politics poll, and decided to focus on cost-of-living issues in their messaging to young voters this year. Polls have continued to findhigh levels of economic anxiety among young voters this year, many of whom say they are worried about finding jobs.
“A lot of people did exactly what we were told to do growing up, go to college, get a degree, and start your career,” 27-year-old Charlotte resident Emery Simon said. “But with AI eating up a lot of early/entry level roles and getting stronger/more advanced every day, it’s really hard to get your foot in the door.”
As they worked to hone their message, DNC officials also tried to retool how they spoke to young voters, trying to reach young Americans on platforms they actually use, and revamping their digital strategy to be more reactive and combative.
The 2026 midterms have been the first test of the operation’s effectiveness, and party officials say their efforts will make the difference this year. Races have tightened across the country in recent weeks, with polls showing Democratic candidates with narrow leads in key Senate races and in toss-ups with GOP House candidates in more than a dozen districts that lean red.
While Democrats are optimistic, actually getting younger Americans to vote has long been a challenge for both parties, particularly in midterm years. Case in point, the highest ever turnout for the age group in the midterm elections happened in 2018, when 36 percent of them voted. Boosting that number this year could make the differences in tight races in Texas, Iowa, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
“Young people have decided elections in the past, and they’re going to decide elections this cycle,” said Alberto Medina, a spokesperson for Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, which tracks elections where young voters are most likely to make a difference.
Republicans say they are not targeting young voters in the same way as Democrats this cycle, arguing that everyone benefits from Trump’s presidency, so no targeted messaging is necessary. Republican National Committee press secretary Natalie Baldassarre told The Post that the GOP is not worried by the Democrats’ efforts to win back young voters.
“Young voters already rejected the Democrats’ failed policies that led to higher costs, more crime, and less freedom — they’re not going to be won over by blue-haired interns swearing on X and Instagram,” Baldassarre said.
Republicans do have a base of young voters; 25 percent of respondents aged 18-29 in an October Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll said they want a Republican Congress that supports Trump’s agenda. But in the same poll, 70 percent of respondents aged 18-29 said they want the next Congress to be controlled by Democrats “to act as a check on Trump.”
Medina said one race where young voters might be particularly influential is for the seat in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, where Republican Rep. Tom Barrett managed to flip the seat in 2024 by 16,852 votes. The district is home to several universities, including Michigan State University, which has over 40,000 undergraduates. Polls for this year show Barrett and Democratic opponent William Lawrence neck-and-neck.
Patrick Pajak, 19, Michigan State University’s College Democrats advocacy director, says he has noticed an uptick in political engagement on campus, and it seems to be driven by an obvious cause.
“I think the main driving force is economic conditions,” Pajak said. “I’ve had conversations with other people in MSU Dems who have expressed concerns about how much gas was taking out of their paychecks. Another issue has been groceries.”
With inflation continuing to be an issue and tariffs and Trump’s war with Iran driving up prices further, many young voters who thought Trump would help the economy are now turning against him. In an the October Washington Post-Ipsos poll, 80 percent of respondents ages 18-29 disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy, and more trusted Democrats (43 percent) with the economy, than Republicans (19 percent).
Simon, the Charlotte resident, said he isn’t registered with a party but took advantage of early voting to support Democratic candidates in the midterms because, “a lot of people my age are really struggling to keep up, and not for lack of trying.”
Many of the Democrats’ most popular social media posts are critical of Republicans’ economic plans, presenting Trump and other Republican leaders as out of touch with the experiences of the average Americans and mocking them as incompetent, irrational or just weird.
“JD Vance finally unveils affordability plan: Jon Husted’s ass,” oneDemocratic TikTok editorializes over a video of the vice president responding to a question from a young Texan, referencing Trump’s recent remarks about Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted’s physique.
The video reflects a major part of Democrats’ strategy: rethinking how to approach social media, with a goal of shedding the stereotype of Democrats as risk-adverse in their communications to better appeal to a younger audience. At the DNC, approval times for social media posts were cut down to 15 minutes and social media account managers were given more freedom with the content of their posts, Paulina Mangubat, DNC deputy chief mobilization officer, told The Washington Post.
“What we’ve done over the past year and a half is build structure that lets us take those kinds of risks,” Mangubat said. “And I think that that has been overall a positive for the party.”
So now, you might see the DNC getting into an X fight with a Trump adviser, like in May when the official Democrats account replied to a Stephen Miller post by telling him to “shut up you ugly f—.” Or the Democrats on YouTube shorts promoting short clips of Democratic candidates “owning” Republican opponents in midterm debates. Or @democrats on TikTok cutting clips of Trump suggestively for a TikTok trend — “for a second i thought this was a random meme page and it’s THE DEMOCRATS BRO,” reads a top comment.
That’s exactly the response the Democrats’ social team hopes to elicit, with a goal of creating content that fits in neatly in style and presentation with content users see regularly on their social media platforms of choice.
The DNC has also prioritized creating unbranded content and partnering with a network of over 500 social media influencers with the hope of reaching users who wouldn’t ordinarily engage with Democratic accounts.
Ron Jefferson, a 24-year-old teaching assistant and Michael Jackson impersonator in North Carolina, said he gets political content from creators across the political spectrum that’s clearly “centered around young adults because it’s funny, you know, it’s fun.”
“It doesn’t have a brand that might make you suspicious. It doesn’t have a donkey on it,” said DNC Digital Rapid Response Director Jacob Horowitz. “And so then that post can go viral.”
Skoufis said the biggest thing the DNC has done to try to win over young voters this cycle is to just listen to them. The High School Democrats of America were recently given representation on the DNC’s Executive Committee for the first time, and the DNC’s Youth Council now has a seat on the powerful DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee, which oversees, among other things, the presidential primary calendar.
“The DNC has never even formally taken the time and put in the effort to listen and to work with these stakeholders,” Skoufis said. “Refreshingly the DNC has been doing a lot more listening.”
Scott Clement contributed to this report.
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