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)
- 2024 Voter Registration Deadlines by State
- Voter ID Requirements by State
