Voting Fast Facts
The Youth Vote
41 million members of Gen Z will be eligible to vote in 2024. There will be more than 8 million youth aging into the electorate in 2024. (Tufts University)
An estimated 50% of young people, ages 18-29, voted in the 2020 presidential election, a remarkable 11-point increase from 2016 (39%) and likely one of the highest rates of youth electoral participation since the voting age was lowered to 18. (Tufts University)
National youth turnout for the midterm elections in 2022 was 23%, which is lower than in the historic 2018 cycle (28%). (Tufts University)
- California: 22.1%
- Illinois: 27%
- New Jersey: 20.6%
- Wisconsin: 48.7% (WPR)
California’s law allowing young people to preregister to vote as soon as they turn 16 has been in effect since 2016, and only 12.9% of the state’s 16- to 17-year-olds are preregistered to vote. This means roughly 900,000 youth in the state who are old enough, have not yet preregistered. In California’s three most populous counties, preregistration rates are: (The Civics Center)
- Los Angeles County – 11.4%
- San Diego County – 15%
- Orange County – 12.7%
As of January 1, 2024, people as young as 16 can pre-register to vote in Illinois. (WCIA)
In the swing state of Wisconsin, just 4.5% of 18-year-olds in Milwaukee County and 10.5% of 18-year-olds in Dane County were registered to vote by the 2022 midterm election. (The Civics Center)
General Electorate
More than 161 million people are registered to vote in the United States, which is 63.2% of the total population. (Statista)
Nearly 22 million people in California are registered to vote ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. That’s 81.5% of eligible residents. (CA Secretary of State)
Americans voted in record numbers in the 2020 presidential election, casting nearly 158.4 million ballots. That works out to more than six-in-ten people of voting age and nearly two-thirds of estimated eligible voters. (Pew Research Center)
Twenty-seven states and Washington, D.C., offer “no-excuse” absentee voting, which means that any voter can request and cast an absentee/mail ballot, no excuse or reason necessary. (National Conference of State Legislatures)
The U.S. ranks 26th out of 32 of highly developed, democratic states in voter turnout. (Pew Research Center)