CIRCLE research shows that Black and Latino young people created more content about the 2020 election and social issues in 2020 than their white and Asian counterparts.

“In places like Pennsylvania and Georgia and Arizona, we see that the strength of support from young people of color, in particular, can be enormously powerful on the state level,” said CIRCLE Deputy Director Abby Kiesa

Youth voter participation is generally trending upward, with 50% of young people ages 18-29 voting in the 2020 presidential election. That was likely one of the highest rates of youth electoral participation since the voting age was lowered to 18," according to CIRCLE.

In the 2018 midterms, 28.2 percent of Americans under 30 voted, according to a CIRCLE analysis. Democrats made broad gains in the House and in governor’s races that fall.

Young people’s confidence in our system of government and the future of our country is already a major concern. We see this moment as a call to action for state and local policymakers, election officials, organizations and campaigns.

The YESI is a valuable tool for stakeholders trying to engage youth in democracy, from Senate campaigns, to major nonpartisan voter engagement organizations, to student groups on college campuses.

"We have seen two important election cycles in a row where young people have been leading," says Abby Kiesa, CIRCLE's deputy director.

In the 2020 presidential election, about half of Americans between the ages 18 and 29 voted, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.

Young voters proved pivotal for Biden in key swing states with narrow margins of victory like Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, according to Tufts University’s Tisch College Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

"I hope that efforts like MTV will help to bring suites of online tools to young people so that they can essentially do all of this in one place—check their registration status, update their registration in the 41 states that allow you to do that online and then request an absentee ballot," said CIRCLE's Kelly Beadle

“In a 2020 when over half the people are submitting their ballots by mail, when people are talking about voting, they are going to be hearing from lots of different sources about voting by mail. We don’t know if that’s going to be the case in 2022,” said CIRCLE's Kelly Beadle.

CIRCLE's 2022 Youth Electoral Significance Index found that Florida is ranked in the top 10 states to have the greatest youth impact on upcoming senate and gubernatorial elections.