Young Voters, a voting bloc big enough to Swing an Election

Youth Disengagement

When asked about voting, young people don't typically say 'they forgot' or that 'they were too busy'. It's that they don't believe it will make a difference.

The numbers tell a different story. In the 2020 Presidential contest, 11,779 votes separated the winner from the loser in Georgia. That state has nearly one million registered voters aged 18 to 29. Young voters could have decided that race on their own. What may feel like a meaningless single vote is, in aggregate, one of the most decisive forces in American elections. No one votes alone. Every vote is part of a bloc. And young voters, as a bloc, are the largest untapped voting group in the country.

2020 saw the highest youth turnout in decades. It also produced one of the closest and most consequential election results in modern history. Those two facts are connected.

So the question is not whether the votes count. They do. The harder question is why so many young people are still sitting out.

The answer is not indifference. Trust in government is near historic lows. Student debt policy has stalled for years. Young people are paying more in rent than their parents paid on mortgages. The political system has moved slowly, or not at all, on the issues that most directly affect people under 30. Pulling back is a rational response to a system that has under-delivered.

But, the withdrawal makes the problem worse. Low youth turnout gives candidates less incentive to run on issues young people care about. That gives young people less reason to vote. Each cycle, the gap between the influence young voters could have and the influence they exercise becomes easier for politicians to ignore. The system learns to function without them.

That's the cycle this campaign is trying to break.

A Voting Bloc Big Enough to Swing Elections

This is the largest generation of eligible voters in American history. Recent turnout numbers don't reflect that yet. But, young voters changed the outcome in 2020, and they can do it again. The only version of the story in which this doesn't happen is the one in which they simply stay home.

A single vote, on its own, is one data point. Millions of them, together, are an election game changer.

CARIN'S STANCE | Young voter disengagement is a policy failure as much as it is a political one. When candidates ignore the issues driving low youth turnout, such as jobs, AI-economy, wages, housing affordability, and climate, they should not be surprised by the numbers. This campaign is committed to direct, substantive engagement with those issues. Turnout among 18-to-29-year-olds is one of the most consequential variables in modern American elections. We intend to change what those numbers look like.

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Aashvi Geddam, Policy Research, Carin for Congress, and Carin Elam