Rural Youth Voter Turnout Improved in 2024

The urban-rural gap in youth voter turnout decreased in 2024 compared to the 2020 presidential election, signaling a relative but notable improvement in the voter participation of young people in rural communities.

Based on CIRCLE’s analysis of voter file data aggregated by Catalist, 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. This shrinking gap is a notable accomplishment for rural youth and for the many organizations and stakeholders that have worked tirelessly to support and encourage their political engagement.

Note: For the purposes of this analysis, we define rurality based on the 2023 Rural-Urban Continuum Codes produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. For our analysis, RUCC codes 5, 7, 8, and 9 were classified as rural. The 2020 youth turnout by rural vs. urban youth also uses the same RUCC codes (5, 7, 8, 9) as the classification of rural, and were calculated using the 2013 RUCC codes. However, the 2020 turnout rates remain at 44% rural vs. 52% urban/suburban with the 2023 RUCC codes despite changes to the classification of rural counties between 2013 and 2023. The national turnout calculation excludes 11 states and Washington, D.C.

In Seven States, Rural Youth Had Higher Turnout than Urban Youth

The voter turnout of rural youth was highest in Minnesota (58%), Maine (56%), Virginia, Michigan, North Carolina, Colorado (all 53%), and Iowa (52%). Most of those states were also among the top states in the nation for overall youth voter turnout.

More notable were the handful of states where the voter participation of rural youth actually exceeded that of urban youth: Alabama, Idaho, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont, and West Virginia. Several of these states have a high proportion of rural population, which makes it especially important that efforts to engage voters in rural communities appear to have been relatively successful.

At the other end of the spectrum, in Arizona, Nevada, New York, and California, the voter turnout of urban youth was more than 10 percentage points higher than that of rural young people in each state. Those are troubling gaps in two of the most populous states in the country (CA and NY) and in major battlegrounds (AZ and NV) where the lack of voter engagement in certain areas could have had a major impact on election results.

Ongoing Challenges and a Shifting Landscape for Young Rural Voters

Each state and community likely faces different challenges when it comes to ensuring the full and equal voter engagement of rural youth. Nationally, despite improvements, young people in rural areas continue to face longstanding inequities in civic access and support. Rural youth are more likely to live in “civic deserts”—places where they perceive there are few opportunities for civic participation. Rural youth are less likely to say that there are people and organizations in their community that can help them make sense of civic information and understand how to take action. Other structural barriers, like unequal access to broadband, can also become barriers to civic participation.

As we continue to learn in our work with Rural Youth Catalyst, there are many leaders and institutions working to eliminate inequities and provide civic support for young people in rural communities. Many organizations, including those led by youth themselves, are also working to improve young people’s sense of belonging in rural areas and creating opportunities so they can engage, thrive, and stay in these communities.

A different dynamic that could have shaped rural youth voter turnout in 2024 is partisan shifts among the electorate. According to data from AP VoteCast, a survey conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research for Fox News and The Associated Press, young voters shifted to the right in the election, backing the Democratic candidate by a smaller margin than they had in 2020. That was also true among rural youth: in 2020, 50% voted for President Trump and 47% for President Biden. In 2024, 60% of rural youth backed Trump.

Those shifts were mostly driven by Latino and, especially, white rural youth. In 2020, 60% of white rural youth voted for Trump; that number grew to 68% in 2024. Meanwhile, in 2024, young Latinos in rural areas spread their vote fairly evenly but still preferred Harris by a slim margin: 50% to 47%. Black rural youth, on the other hand, preferred Harris by a 3-to-1 margin in 2024: 74% to 24%.

If, as it appears, young Republican voters were more motivated to participate in 2024, and youth in rural areas swung further toward the Republican candidate, that could also have contributed to their relatively stronger participation in the 2024 presidential election. These differences by race/ethnicity also highlight that rural youth are not a monolithic voting bloc. This is important for funders, practitioners, election administrators, and others to keep in mind as they shape programming and interventions to support rural youth. For example, our recent analysis of election policies highlights that, among rural youth, race and other factors can have a major effect on whether young people reap the benefits of policies like automatic registration and pre-registration