Young People and the 2024 Election: Struggling, Disconnected, and Dissatisfied

Young people’s electoral participation dropped notably in 2024. After historically high youth voter turnout of over 50% in the 2020 presidential contest, our early estimate is that 42% of youth (ages 18-29) voted in 2024. And after several cycles of overwhelming support for Democratic candidates, exit poll data suggests that young voters supported Vice President Harris over President-elect Trump by just 4 percentage points.

Our initial analyses of those exit polls point to some explanations for those shifts—especially young people’s focus on the economy and a more conservative and Republican-leaning group of youth who cast ballots. But exit polls only give us data on youth who voted. To truly understand what happened with the youth vote in 2024, we need data on all young people that directly tackles why many youth didn’t vote and what drove or prevented participation beyond a single issue.

The CIRCLE Post-2024 Election Poll gives us that comprehensive data from a nationally representative survey of young people ages 18-34. In this initial analysis from our poll, we answer key questions about what motivated youth to vote and why others stayed home, their diverse issue priorities, and whether campaigns and institutions did enough to reach young voters this past cycle.

Many Young People Lacked Information and Motivation to Register

Young people continue to face a series of structural, informational, and motivational barriers to voting.

We asked young people, ages 18-34, who weren’t registered to vote about the main reason they weren’t registered. More than 1 in 10 youth (12%) said they did not know how to register or had problems with voter registration forms. Nearly a third of young people (31%) said they were too busy, ran out of time, or missed the registration deadline.

As our research has always highlighted, some groups of youth are more burdened by these barriers than others. For example, young people of color were almost twice as likely to have trouble with voter registration. And young people without college experience were much more likely than college-educated youth to miss deadlines or run out of time to register. That may point to a lack of voter registration information and activities for young people outside of college campuses.

At the same time, more than a third of young people (36%) said they did not register to vote because it was not important to them, which was by far the most common reason given. While still a minority of youth compared to those who didn’t register for other reasons, the number of youth who felt registering to vote was not important to them remains significant.

Dissatisfaction with Candidates Was the Biggest Barrier to Voting

Our findings among young people who didn’t cast a ballot—whether they were registered or not—reflect a similar mix of reasons and barriers. Eleven percent of youth said they had problems with absentee or in-person voting. Seventeen percent said they were too busy or had commitments that prevented them from voting. But 20% said that voting was not important to them and 24% said they did not vote because they did not like any of the candidates, which was the most commonly given reason.

Here we also saw differences by race and education. While only 10% of white youth said they didn’t vote because they didn’t have enough information about the candidates or voting process, 17% of youth of color said so. Meanwhile, young people without college experience were slightly more likely than those with college experience to say they didn’t have enough information to vote, and more likely to face issues with transportation to the polls.

Issues, Not Influencers, Motivated Youth to Vote

Young people who did cast ballots in 2024 had a variety of reasons for voting. When asked about their motivations for casting a ballot, 19% of young voters chose expressing their support for a candidate as a top-three reason, and 21% said they voted to express their opposition to a candidate. Forty percent of youth who voted said they did so because they consider it their duty as a citizen.

It’s also worth highlighting that, in an election cycle with a lot of focus on the potential role of influencers and celebrities to engage young voters, less than 1% of young people said that motivation from an influencer had been one of their top-three motivations to cast a ballot. Party loyalty was also not a major motivator for young people: just 9% of youth named “to support candidates that belong to my political party” as one of their top reasons for voting, and we know from previous research that young people have an ambivalent relationship with political parties

As with reasons for not voting, motivations to vote also varied by race/ethnicity and gender. White (51%) youth were more likely to vote to have an impact on issues or because they saw it as a duty (45%). Black youth were less likely to see voting as a duty (28%), but more likely to be motivated by the sacrifices others have made so they can vote (22%). Young women (18%) were also more likely than young men (13%) to say that one of their main reasons for voting was the sacrifice others had made so they could cast a ballot. 

Overall, the most frequently cited reason for youth to vote was to support action on the issues they care about: nearly half (46%) of all young people who voted said that was one of their top motivations. That tracks with other recent CIRCLE research, which has found that young people are primarily issue-based voters with a diverse set of issue concerns that drive their participation.

Not Just the Economy: Youth Also Focused on Abortion, Climate, Healthcare

Our analysis of exit poll data suggested that economic concerns were the top priority for youth who cast a ballot in 2024. Our new survey data shows that was also the case among young people regardless of whether they voted, but that large numbers of young people were also thinking about a wide range of other issues when considering whether—and for whom—to vote last November.

We asked youth to select and rank their top three issues immediately following the 2024 election. Sixty-four percent of youth chose the cost of living/inflation as one of their top three priorities, making it far and away the biggest issue for youth.

The cost of living was followed by healthcare (27%), abortion (27%), climate change and the environment (26%), jobs and unemployment (25%), and immigration (24%). Three other issues (education and childcare, voting rights and democracy, and free speech and religious freedom) were chosen as a top-three priority by more than 15% of youth.

The fact that nine different issues were selected as a top-three concern by at least 15% of young people speaks to the extraordinary diversity in young people’s perspectives and priorities. It suggests that there are multiple avenues for reaching and engaging young people by speaking to the specific problems they care about, and that taking a single-issue approach is likely ineffective for bringing more youth into the electorate.

Examining the diversity of young people’s issue priorities by race and other factors further highlights the need to tailor outreach and messaging for different communities of young people:

• Young men were much more likely than young women to prioritize economic issues like jobs and inflation, as well as immigration and foreign policy. Meanwhile, young women were more likely than young men to choose healthcare, as well as education and childcare, as top-three issues. And they were also nearly twice as likely to prioritize abortion.
• Asian youth were more likely to select climate change and gun policy as top-three issues. Black youth were more likely to prioritize jobs and unemployment, education, and especially racism. Thirty-two percent of Black youth chose racism as a top issue, compared to just 11% of all youth.
• Young people without college degrees were more likely to focus on jobs and unemployment, and less likely to prioritize issues like climate change and foreign policy.

There were also key differences in self-reported voting rates based on which issues youth prioritized. In our pre-election youth poll we had found that, despite being some of young people’s most important issues, youth who prioritized economic concerns like inflation and jobs had a lower likelihood to vote than those who did not cite those issues as top priorities. And our post-election survey data shows that young people who did not vote in 2024 were more likely to choose cost of living and jobs as top priorities than youth who did vote.

The same was true of issues like healthcare or education and childcare, which may intersect with economic concerns if young people are worried about the cost and affordability of these basic needs. On the other hand, youth who voted were more likely to prioritize issues like abortion, climate change, foreign policy, immigration, and voting rights and democracy. 

This dynamic may partially reflect demographic differences in the groups of young people that tend to prioritize various types of issues—for example, youth with college experience are more likely to prioritize social issues and also more likely to vote because of higher access to information and outreach. Conversely, it may also signal ongoing challenges in reaching young people with profound economic concerns which may stem from their own financial struggles.

Deeper Challenges to Youth Engagement

In past election cycles there were major challenges to engaging young voters due to a lack of information, campaign contact, and support that helped young people feel ready to vote. While those remain important concerns, especially for some youth communities, our new poll data suggests that they were not major problems this election, so the drop in voter participation may be due to deeper challenges and inequities.

Nearly 2 in 3 respondents in our survey (63%) said they were contacted at least once about voting in the 2024 election by a political party or another type of organization, and 58% said they were contacted multiple times. There were some slight differences by race/ethnicity and by gender: 39% of young men were never contacted by an organization or campaign, compared to 35% of young women. And Black youth were the most likely to be contacted multiple times and least likely to never be contacted.

However, the biggest difference was by educational attainment: 48% of youth without college experience said they were never contacted about the election, compared to 29% of youth with college experience.

As in previous elections, contact matters—especially multiple contacts. Youth who voted were much more likely to say that they were contacted multiple times; conversely, young people who didn’t cast ballots in 2022 were much more likely to say that they were never contacted. 

Whether through direct contact from parties and organizations or through other means, the vast majority of young people said they got information about how to vote in 2024. Forty-one percent of youth said they heard a lot about how to vote, and another 36% said they heard “some” about it, while 23% of youth said they heard “not much” or nothing at all about the voting process. As with direct contact from organizations, that information mattered: young people who voted were much more likely to have seen or heard a lot of information about the process.

That information may have led to most young people feeling prepared to vote. Seventy-five percent of young people agreed or strongly agreed that they felt qualified and ready to vote. Only 6% disagreed that they felt qualified, while the other 19% neither agreed nor disagreed. Young men were more likely than young women to strongly agree they felt qualified, and youth with college experience more likely than non-college youth.

These gaps and inequities in contact, information, and preparation are concerning. They likely explain, at least in part, why some young people did not vote in the 2024 election. But all told, the fact that a strong majority of youth felt informed and ready suggests we must look deeper to fully understand what is keeping some youth from participating in the election.

One answer likely lies in young people’s dissatisfaction with candidates. In addition, some of our recent research points to one key dynamic: even when young people have enough information, they may lack the connection to their communities and a sense of belonging in political homes that are strongly associated with civic engagement. Our post-election survey bears that out, only 24% of young people said they feel like they are part of a group or movement in which people express themselves politically.

Young people have also been experiencing a series of challenges, from a mental health crisis to economic difficulties, that can also serve as barriers to voting. Only twenty-three percent of young people consider themselves financially secure, with another 33% saying they “are stable” enough to meet basic needs. But 43% of young people say that it can be difficult to meet their basic financial needs, including 14% of young people who say they “often struggle” to meet them.

There appears to be a major link between financial situation and voter turnout, with financially secure youth overrepresented among those who cast a ballot in 2024, and less stable youth overrepresented among young people who didn’t vote.

A Profile of Non-Voting Youth: Ignored and Disconnected

All of this survey data allows us to begin painting a picture of young people who did not vote in 2024, especially of some of the ways they are struggling and the barriers they still face:

• Sixty-two percent say they sometimes or often find it difficult to make ends meet.
• Just 13% of them say they are part of any group or movement that expresses itself politically
• More than half were never contacted by any organization or campaign about the 2024 election (59%) and said they heard “not much” or nothing at all about how to vote (48%)
• They were overwhelmingly more likely to prioritize economic issues like inflation and jobs than youth who voted

These personal struggles, different issue priorities, organizational neglect, and disconnection from political homes likely combined and contributed to some of the disinterest in the election and dissatisfaction with candidates reported by youth who did not vote in 2024. They are also complex, intersecting dynamics that we will continue to explore through our research.

In the coming weeks and months, we will analyze more data from this post election-survey to dig deeper on some of these barriers to voting. Our aim is to better understand what happened in 2024 and to provide campaigns, communities, and organizations roadmaps for engaging youth in 2026, 2028, and beyond.

We will also look beyond voting to examine broader issues related to young people’s role in democracy. How else are they participating in civic life? Are they getting opportunities to develop and use their voices? And how do they conceive of and relate to our democratic system of government itself?

About the Poll

The CIRCLE Post-2024 Election Youth Survey was developed by CIRCLE at Tufts University, and the polling firm Ipsos collected the data from their nationally representative panel of respondents between November 14 and November 26, 2024. The study surveyed a total of 2,064 self-reported U.S. citizens ages 18 to 34 in the United States; unless otherwise mentioned, data are for all 18- to 34-year-olds in our sample. 

The margin of sampling error for the entire sample is +/- 2.15 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Margins of error for racial and ethnic subgroups at the 95% confidence level are as follows: Asian (8.11%), Black (6.22%), Latino (5.33%) and White (2.82%).