25 Things We Learned about Young Voters in 2025

Author: Sam Searles
Contributor: Alberto Medina

In 2026, CIRCLE is celebrating 25 years of leading the charge to improve youth engagement in democracy. Here, we’ve compiled 25 key data points from our work in 2025 that individuals, communities, and institutions can use as tools to understand and support young people in this election cycle and beyond. 

Youth Voting - Looking Back at the 2024 Election

As more data about young voters became available in 2025, we looked back at trends in young people’s participation in the most recent presidential election.

1. 2024 Youth Turnout: 47% of youth voted in 2024, slightly lower than in the historic 2020 cycle (50%) but a marked improvement from the 2016 presidential election, when we estimated that just 39% of young people cast ballots.
    
2. Race and Gender Gaps: There was a 9-point participation gap by gender in 2024: 50% turnout among young women and 41% among young men. That gap actually decreased compared to 2020, which had a higher turnout overall for both groups (55% young women, 44% young men), but it remains a major source of inequality in voting. There were also major differences by gender combined with race.
   
    
3. Swing States in 2024: A handful of states increased their youth voter turnouts in 2024 compared to 2020: Michigan (+4), Pennsylvania (+2), and Georgia, North Carolina, and New Mexico (all +1). Notably, the majority of these states were highly competitive battlegrounds; we have previously documented how the increased attention, outreach, and resources in these states can increase youth voter turnout - in the case of Michigan, 16-year-olds were allowed to preregister to vote for the first time in 2024.
    
4. Rural Youth Turnout: 42% of rural youth, ages 18-29, voted in the 2024 presidential election, 5 percentage points lower than the 47% of urban/suburban youth who cast a ballot. In 2020, we estimated that 44% of rural youth and 52% of urban/suburban youth: an 8-point difference. In seven states, young rural voters turned out at a higher rate than urban/suburban youth voters: Alabama, Idaho, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont, and West Virginia.
    
5. State-By-State Turnout: In 2024, youth voter turnout ranged from 62% in Minnesota to 33% in Arkansas.* These geographic differences, shaped by voting laws, electoral policies, and more, hinder the full equity and representativeness of our democracy. *Data is not available for all states.
   
   
   
6. College Student Turnout: While not all young voters are college students, more than half of college students voted in the 2024 presidential election. 76% of college students were registered to vote, and 53% of all eligible students voted. The voter turnout rate of registered students, or yield rate, was 70%. These student electoral participation rates are lower than in 2020, which was a record-breaking year for voter turnout among college students and youth overall. The student voter turnout rate is higher than in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, highlighting that the electoral engagement of college students generally remains on an upward trend.
    
7. Voting Motivation: Nearly half of youth (46%) who voted said one of their top reasons for voting was the desire to have an impact on issues they care about. 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.
    
8. Voting Methods: 37% of youth who voted in 2024 cast their ballot in person on Election Day, 25% did so in person during the early voting period, 28% mailed in their ballot, and 10% dropped off their ballot at a drop box or other designated location. That means as many young people are now using a vote-by-mail option as they are voting on Election Day, and makes equity in ease and access to these options a key factor in young people’s voter participation.

Issues and Barriers

9. Disconnection from Political Movements: Less than 1 in 4 youth, and only 13% of youth who didn’t vote in 2024, felt like they belonged to a group that politically expressed itself. This disconnection from political homes likely contributed to some of the disinterest in the election and dissatisfaction with candidates reported by youth who did not vote in 2024.
    
10. Financial Issues and Struggles: More than 40% of youth, and over 60% of youth who didn’t vote in 2024, said they sometimes or often find it difficult to meet basic needs. When we asked youth to select and rank their top three issues immediately following the 2024 election, 64% of youth chose the cost of living/inflation as one of their top three priorities, making it far and away the biggest issue.
    
    
11. Voting Barriers for Youth of Color: Compared to white youth (10%), young people of color (17%) were more likely to say that they didn’t vote because they didn’t have enough information about the process or the candidates. This supports previous CIRCLE research that finds not all youth experience barriers to voting at the same extent.
     
12. In-Person Connections and Voting: Half of youth are not spending time in person with members of their community. Sixty-one percent of young people who did not vote in 2024 said they rarely or never do so, compared to 47% of those who did vote. Beyond the ballot box, for all 17 civic activities we asked about in our survey, youth who never or rarely spend in-person community time were less likely to participate in civic life. 

The Youth Vote in 2025 State and Municipal Races

Young people also made their voices heard in several key 2025 elections, turning out in higher numbers and providing critical support for Democratic candidates.

13. New York City: 75% of New York City youth voted for Zohran Mamdani in 2025, compared to 19% for former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and 5% for Republican Curtis Sliwa. Mamdani won the three-way race with 50% of the overall vote; young people were his strongest supporters out of all age groups.
     
14. Virginia and New Jersey: CIRCLE estimates that 34% of youth (ages 18-29) voted in Virginia and 29% in New Jersey. In both states, youth turnout increased by 7 percentage points in Virginia and 9 points in New Jersey compared to the 2021 gubernatorial elections. According to exit polls, 70% of youth supported Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, and 69% of youth supported Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, giving both candidates 35+ point margins over their Republican opponents. 

Attitudes Toward Institutions and Democracy

What do young people actually think about democracy? 

15. Dissatisfaction with Democracy: Only 16% of youth believe democracy is working for them, and just 36% of youth say that U.S. democracy today can address the issues the country is facing, and only 7% “strongly agree” with that statement. This low level of confidence in democracy was a common thread. Neglecting these views and needs would risk missing out on the potential of young people and could even drive them further away from favoring democratic processes.
     
16. Youth and Political Violence: Young people largely reject political violence: only about 1 in 10 young people say it is sometimes necessary to achieve progress or that they would support an organization that engages in political violence. The same small number of youth say that violent protest, political intimidation, or the assassination of political leaders are “sometimes or always OK;” the vast majority say that these actions are never acceptable.
     
17. Democracy Persists, but so does Disengagement: The majority of youth (63%) value the basic values and practices of democracy, but they are relatively disengaged from civic action and may be passive in the face of current threats to democracy. We should create opportunities for young people with different attitudes toward democracy to talk, engage, and take action together in ways that leverage each group’s strengths.
     
18. Trust in Institutions: The vast majority of youth (74%) trust their peers and personal networks, while only 1 in 5 trust major social media and tech companies. Youth also report higher trust in local government and nonprofits than in major political parties and national institutions.It is notable that many of the groups or institutions young people trust most are those they are more likely to see up close and potentially have personal experience with.
    
    
     
19. Youth and the News: News websites and apps were the biggest source of electoral information among all youth, but social media and digital platforms also played a key role in young people’s political information diet. That makes media literacy critical, and youth who voted in 2024 were more likely to check the source and truthfulness of online information.
      
20.  Youth, Gender, Party, and Social Media: Examining party preference and gender together underscores just how different some young people’s political media diets are. For example, 37% of young Republican men saw information on YouTube, compared to 20% of young Democratic women. Forty-three percent of young Republican women saw information on Facebook, compared to just 13% of young Democratic men. On the other hand, young Democratic women relied on TikTok (38%) far more than young Republican men (19%). Young Democratic men relied on news websites and apps (46%) and Reddit (25%) far more than other groups. 
     
21. Youth, Political Efficacy, and School Civics: Less than half of the youth in our survey about their school experiences (48%) said they recalled feeling that sense of belonging in school. Belonging is directly tied to increased civic activity in young people; by creating a climate in which students feel that people care about each other, schools may be instilling caring and support as a civic value, with broad implications for the future. 

Taking Civic Action

What does youth civic engagement look like beyond voting? 

22. Youth and Advocacy: Millions of young people are civically active. Twenty percent of youth have engaged in issue advocacy, and 18% have gone to protests or demonstrations. Many more youth say they’d be willing to participate in other forms of engagement if presented with the opportunity, which highlights the continued need for outreach that connects young people to accessible avenues for civic participation.
    
     
23. Gender and Activism: Young women seem to be more civically active: they are more likely than young men to protest (21% vs 14%) and sign petitions (60% vs 51%).
     
24. Issues Drive Action: Young people who chose LGBTQ+ issues, democracy, or climate change as top-3 priorities were much more likely to protest (37%, 36%, and 33%, respectively) than youth who prioritized cost of living (28%) or jobs (21%). This suggests that young people may not be finding accessible and welcoming movements on issues they care about connected to economic concerns—and perhaps that existing movements on those issues are not reaching out to and making room for youth.
     
25. Youth Share their Voices: As part of CIRCLE’s Our Take series, we published four essays from young authors on topics like local organizing, indigenous youth, and lowering the voting age. Their first-hand knowledge and expertise on the motivations and barriers that shape their generation's civic engagement should be at the center of all conversations, efforts, and strategies to strengthen young people's participation.