Young voters as a whole favored Kamala Harris to Donald Trump, 52% to 46%, in the 2024 presidential election. Yet, as with every age group this year, youth showed a notable shift toward Trump compared to how they voted in 2020. 

About 56% of young men, a demographic Trump’s campaign was vocal about trying to woo, said they voted for the former president this year, a flip from the 56% who voted for Joe Biden four years ago. Young women, while overall favoring Harris, also took steps toward Trump, moving from 33% in 2020 to 40% in 2024.

Although that translated to a 10-point jump (36% to 46%) in youth support for Trump compared to 2020, young people were still the age group with the highest support for the Democratic candidate this year. 

The findings come from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), the non-partisan research center on youth engagement at Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. For this early look at youth and the election outcome, CIRCLE analyzed census population data, the National Election Pool election week survey, and the AP VoteCast Survey conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research for Fox News and the Associated Press. The estimates do have margins of error and CIRCLE will update them when more information is available. 

Overall Youth Turnout Down From 2020 but Strong in Battleground States

Almost 50 million young people, defined here as ages 18 to 29, were eligible to vote in the 2024 election; according to the exit poll data, about 42% of them did. That percentage was on par with CIRCLE’s initial turnout estimate for 2016 (42%-44%) but lower than the historic turnout seen in 2020, which CIRCLE estimated at 52%-55%. In the key battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the average turnout was much higher: 50% on aggregate. 

“This drop in overall youth voter turnout occurs despite the extraordinary efforts of many young leaders and organizers to engage their peers and their communities. Young people know their communities best, and more of us can better support their work to eliminate inequities in youth voting,” said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of CIRCLE.

In major battleground states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, young people were more likely to vote for Harris—though in some of these states the difference between youth support for Trump and for Harris is within the margin of error. And while Harris won more youth votes in 22 states for which CIRCLE currently has data, Trump won young voters in 17 states. In 2020, Trump won the youth vote in just seven states. 

Major Youth Choice Differences by Gender and Race 

Young voters did not vote monolithically. Some of the largest vote choice differences among youth were by gender and by race/ethnicity. 

“We have often seen differences between young men and women,” said Abby Kiesa, deputy director of CIRCLE, with this year’s divide being particularly wide: Young women supported Harris over Trump by 18 points, while young men supported Trump by 14 points.

And breaking out voting choice by race, she said, “there are considerable differences here and there always are.” 

White youth, who make up 58% of the youth population, voted for Trump over Harris in 2024 (54% to 44%) despite having preferred Biden in 2020. On the other hand, strong majorities of Black (75%), Asian (72%), and Latino (58%) youth backed Harris in 2024, though by smaller margins than they had favored Biden in 2020 (87%, 83%, and 73% respectively). Young Black women and young Asian women in particular showed strong support for Harris, 85% and 79% respectively.

Young people, Kawashima-Ginsberg emphasized, are not as tied to a political party as older voters—they are often drawn to certain issues that in turn affect their vote choice. 

Young people who chose issues like racism, abortion, and climate change as their top priority in the 2024 election were the most likely to support Harris. However, 40% of youth chose the economy and jobs as their top priority—by far the highest of any issue, and those youth voted for Trump by a more than 22-point margin. Immigration was the third most-chosen top issue among youth, and the young people who chose it voted for Trump by a nearly 70-point margin.

Gen Z in particular, Kawashima-Ginsberg said, has had trouble with its economic footing. “This is a very indebted generation that has also struggled to get their career and their income going. After the pandemic, they were the first to be let go, the last to come back to earning living-wage jobs,” she said. “So the economy may have been the issue that truly resonated with young people.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean that youth will continue to vote for Republican candidates. “There are unique things that happen in every election cycle that can shift trends,” said Alberto Medina, CIRCLE’s communications team lead. The Parkland shooting in 2018, the George Floyd murder in 2020, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 turned gun violence prevention, racial justice, and abortion access into top election issues. “Young people are still having these formative experiences,” he said, which is one reason to “pay attention to young people” and ask them how these experiences are shaping their view of politics and the country.

Young voters were as likely as all voters to say the economy/jobs was their top issue in the 2024 election, while youth were about half as likely as all voters to choose immigration.  

Just 4% of youth chose foreign policy as their top issue in the election. And among that group, 8% voted for a third-party candidate, higher than youth overall (2%), which may suggest a movement away from the major candidates by youth who prioritized the situation in the Middle East.

Among the youngest citizens during this election cycle, 18- and 19-year-olds registered in numbers higher than in 2020 (the election with the highest registration in 50 years) in more than a dozen states for which data was available. Michigan led this increase in voter registration among youth, likely helped by new policy changes such as youth pre-registration and automatic voter registration. These are state policies which previous CIRCLE analysis has shown to have a positive relationship to youth participation.  

In the coming days and weeks, CIRCLE will be releasing more exclusive data on young people’s voter participation and impact on results. New analyses will be available on CIRCLE’s 2024 election page.