Demographic change is more than race and ethnicity
A flurry of articles and polling herald the arrival of Gen Z voters: progressive, more engaged than their predecessor “Gens” and, critically, more prone to show up and vote. You’re either at the table or on the menu, the saying goes. Younger voters are pulling up chairs.
Youth turnout jumped dramatically in 2018 and again in 2020, spawning headlines. Critically, turnout among the 18-29 set in 2022 helped stave off the overhyped red wave that instead rippled. “Researchers say the 2022 election had the second highest voter turnout among voters under 30 in at least the past three decades,” NPR reported. The record was set in 2018 when 31% of those eligible cast ballots. Not exactly “whopping,” but we’ll take it. The trends are moving in the right direction.
Harvard Youth Poll director John Della Volpe points to “the big four” issues driving their engagement: climate change, gun violence, economic inequality and LGBTQ+ rights drive their engagement. The group charted the changes over time (above) for The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent:
Those numbers — which come from the Harvard Youth Poll of 18-to-29-year-olds released each spring — all suggest that today’s young voters are substantially more progressive on these issues than young voters were even five or 10 years ago. Sizable majorities now reject the idea that same-sex relationships are morally wrong (53 percent), support stricter gun laws (63 percent) and want government to provide basic necessities (62 percent).
Meanwhile, support for government doing more to curb climate change soared to 57 percent in 2020 before subsiding to 50 percent this year. That small dip may reflect preoccupation with economic doldrums unleashed by covid-19. While that 50 percent could be higher, the issue has seen a 21-point shift, and the polling question asks if respondents want action on climate “even at the expense of economic growth.”
Many of today’s 18-to-29-year-olds, who are mostly older Gen Z Americans plus the tail end of the Millennial generation, lived their formative years during the Great Recession and the election of Trump. What’s more, these new voters are politically coming of age during a remarkable confluence of events that appear to be conspiring in an improbable way to push them to the left.
Those “big four” are changing voting patterns as well as policy:
Demographer William Frey and his colleagues calculate that by the 2036 presidential race, Gen Z will represent 35 percent of eligible voters. “They’re growing up in a 21st century America that’s far more diverse, inclusive and globally connected than the 1950s and 1960s America of the GOP base,” Frey told me. “They’re going to shun the Republican Party as they get older.”
What that means for now is that the 2024 electorate is not the same as it was in 2016. Demographic changes involve more than the complexion of voters. An older cohort is exiting while a new one takes the stage. Every year there are 20 million fewer older voters, write Democratic pollster Celinda Lake and documentarian Mac Heller (also in The Post):
Which means that between Trump’s election in 2016 and the 2024 election, the number of Gen Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2010s) voters will have advanced by a net 52 million against older people. That’s about 20 percent of the total 2020 eligible electorate of 258 million Americans.
And unlike previous generations, Gen Z votes. Comparing the four federal elections since 2015 (when the first members of Gen Z turned 18) with the preceding nine (1998 to 2014), average turnout by young voters (defined here as voters under 30) in the Trump and post-Trump years has been 25 percent higher than that of older generations at the same age before Trump — 8 percent higher in presidential years and a whopping 46 percent higher in midterms.
That’s “whopping” in relative terms. Celebrate the trend. Younger voters still underperform their elders quite a bit as this North Carolina graphic you’ve seen before demonstrates:
Lake and Heller see Gen Z voters driven to the polls by the same policy concerns policy Della Volpe found.
Another trend that may be reversing, at least in California, is people registering to vote with neither major party. That is, as independents. That’s NPP (No Party Preference) in California, NPA (No Party Affiliation) in Florida, and UNA (Unaffiliated) in North Carolina, etc.
A recent graphic produced by my partner in data, Dick Sinclair, shows that the bulk of those registered UNA in North Carolina (relative to Ds and Rs) are roughly age 45 or younger. Your state will look similar. The separation between UNA registration and UNA voter turnout (green line and green bar chart) is also illustrative. Voting by older Ds and Rs more closely tracks their voter registration (2020 graphic). There is plenty of room for youth turnout to grow.
In California, at least, the trend toward more younger Americans registering “None of the Above” is reversing. Eric McGhee of the Public Policy Institute of California explains, “since 2018, the overall share of NPP voters has undergone the sharpest reversal in 60 years of registration data”:
This about-face has been especially visible among the youngest registrants. In just two election cycles, the independent registration rate among voters under 25 has fallen to levels unseen in almost two decades. Democratic registration has benefited most from this change, but Republican registration is also modestly higher, and the party has made its most sustained gains among young voters since at least 2002.
This reversal is also marked among Latinos and Asian Americans. And significant shares of both groups have registered as Republicans, even as Republican registration continued to slide among all other Californians.
California’s Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) implemented in 2018 contributes to this shift. “Three-quarters of voters either created or updated registration records since the advent of AVR in April 2018, compared to just 41% in the four years between 2012 and 2016. Virtually all this increase is due to AVR, which is now the touch point for 35% of the records in the file,” McGhee adds. Plus NPP seems to be out of fashion, but there might also be technical reasons for the change in the electronic registration interface.
Still, trends that begin in California have a way of spreading east.
There are probably a number of explanations for the fact that independent registration is no longer the juggernaut it once was. While it seems clear that decisions about party registration can be swayed by the way registration forms are set up, it’s also possible that many Californians are changing their minds about joining political parties. Independent registration won’t disappear, but party registration is likely to continue surging in the near future.
How that relates to voting patterns remains to be seen. As Sargent’s headline offers, the shifts should alarm Donald Trump and the GOP. They might respond by moderating their positions to appeal to Gen Z voters. But with their doubling-down reflex fully engorged, that’s not going to happen.