Compared to other countries like Sweden or Denmark, who have around 80% of their youth voting in each election, only around half of American youth end up voting in presidential races. Statistics about the low youth vote have reinforced negative assumptions about youth participation in the political process, specifically placing blame on how young people are supposedly disengaged with or uninterested in politics
Research by Tufts University shows that youth political engagement is on the rise, especially among young women, and that the low youth vote can be attributed to a variety of institutional barriers.
Reinforcing the myth of the lazy teen voter creates a society that does not expect young people to vote and that does not emphasize the importance of the youth vote. Often, young people do know the importance of voting, but obstacles like long lines, lack of transportation, and voter registration troubles bar them from voting, even if they want to.
Young people may feel that they are too unqualified to vote, that their vote doesn’t matter, or that their government is too fractured to fix any of the issues that they actually care about, but a change in how society views and how education fosters the youth vote could help remedy this.
We need to change the way that civics is taught to young people, shifting from the more traditional curriculum about how government works to emphasizing the importance of voting, civic engagement, and navigating voting barriers that will benefit young people in the long run. Schools should foster mobilization efforts that teach their students how to actually register to vote and fill out their ballot.
Consistent voting later in life begins with creating good voting habits. To fully take advantage of the youth vote, voting should start as early as possible.
Eighteen year olds were first granted the right to vote only 53 years ago in 1971, when the 26th Amendment was ratified. The effort to expand suffrage to young people spanned from a cumulative effort in the midst of World War II, when Congress lowered the drafting age to include men aged 18 to 21, despite their inability to vote. Georgia was the first state to lower the voting age to 18 for local and state elections, but the only way to lower the voting age for federal elections was to amend the constitution.
The presidential election of 1972, between incumbent Richard Nixon, who signed the 26th Amendment into law, and South Dakota senator George McGovern, was the first presidential race that Americans aged 18 to 20 could vote in.
Despite launching youth voter registration drives around college campuses and being the anti-war candidate in an era of American rebellion, McGovern still lost half of the youth vote as well as the entire election in a landslide victory to Nixon. Though both candidates tried to appeal to this generation of newly eligible voters, McGovern failed to realize that the youth vote were of different demographics and that any chance of his victory would rely on gaining both the college and non-college youth vote, whom he neglected.
But, McGovern’s loss of the youth vote due to misplaced campaigning efforts is a modern political tale. We saw semblances of his failed youth vote campaign during 2024, when some young voters shifted towards Donald Trump, despite Kamala Harris’ heightened appeal to American youth. Harris did win the youth vote, but it was close.
Since 2008, Democrats have received at least 60% of the youth vote, but Harris only received 54%. Trump kept his 2024 campaign messaging simple and appeared on various podcast interviews that specifically appealed to an audience of young men. Young people and their political participation have been subjected to stereotyping, where older generations believe that all young people identify with more leftist beliefs. This partisan speculation leaves young people in the dust and unengaged with their public officials who push aside the need to appeal to all of the youth vote. Stereotypes about youth may paint them all as liberals, but young people are not monolithic.
Harris focused her presidential campaign heavily on abortion rights, a top issue to American youth, but according to AP VoteCast, the economy was the priority among young people, which may have helped Trump to increase his youth voting base.
It is easy to get caught up in the AOC’s and Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s of American politics, who often represent the two opposing extremes of our partisan, red vs. blue, government. But, at the end of the day, they are not our politicians.
While local public officials may ignore the youth vote, in all of its nuances and diversity, and fail to appeal to this important demographic due to predisposed myths, in reality, young people do care about their communities and the politics that surround them.
In the end, our question does not focus on whether or not young people know their representatives, but rather, if their representatives know them.
