More than Half of College Students Voted in 2024

More than half of college students voted in the 2024 presidential election, based on new data from CIRCLE's National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE), the country's only objective measure of voter participation in higher education institutions.

According to the NSLVE data, 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.

The National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) is a study of student political engagement in higher education institutions and a service to over 1,000 U.S. colleges and universities that can use it to understand and improve their student voting rates. Educators, students, and community partners use NSLVE data to improve civic learning in and out of the classroom, to develop or enhance co-curricular programming, to benchmark student voter participation, to inform accreditation reports, and more. All NSLVE data is deidentified, nonpartisan, and compliant with student privacy laws: researchers never see information on who students are or who they voted for. The 2024 data on student participation is based on the voting records of nearly 9 million college students.

With data for every general election going back to 2012, NSLVE provides a unique longitudinal view of civic engagement on college campuses. The 2024 NSLVE student voting rate (53%) is significantly higher than our estimate of voter turnout among all youth, ages 18-29, in the 2024 election: 47%. That speaks to the valuable voter education, registration, and mobilization efforts taking place on college campuses. In an election cycle when that work was especially difficult within a challenging political environment, the strong continued participation of college students is a testament to the work of young people themselves—and of the many educators, administrators, and leaders who work to support their engagement in democracy.

In early 2026, NSLVE will release a full national report with more detailed data into the college student vote in 2024. The report will include registration and turnout rates by state, age, gender, race/ethnicity, field of study, and other factors. It will also include insights from comparisons with previous election cycles and from campus leaders' efforts to engage their students in 2024. We will also provide confidential reports to all higher education institutions participating in the NSLVE study with the electoral participation rates for students on their campus.

Learn more about joining the NSLVE study here.