The Youth Vote in 2020

The bad news:

Youth are voting in record numbers, and this will be an incredible election in terms of youth participation BUT, other age groups are doing even better.

Rarely have I wanted to be more wrong about the conclusions that i'm drawing from data. I encourage all of you to tell me what mistakes I’m making, but I’m not seeing youth making a difference in the 2020 election so far in terms of early vote turnout.  Several folks have highlighted the usually excellent work of Tuft’s CIRCLE (Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) which shows how many more young people are requesting early ballots (I've copied their popular analysis at the bottom).  The problem is, an even greater number of older people are requesting (and returning early ballots).

I’m just one guy with a laptop and no budget, so I don’t have access to the TargetSmart data, or the ability to crunch through large files produced in some states of voter-level early voting info.  I do, however, have access to the amazing US Elections Project data (an awesome project that is fully open to everyone) and the data I’m seeing tells a different story…

Here are three important states where I have been able to get data: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania:

2020 Early Vote as a Percentage of 2016 Total Vote by age
Votes in thousands
Georgia as of 10/29	16Total Vote	EV20	EV20/16Tot	Pct of 16	Pct of 20
18 to 24	388.6	269.4	69%	9%	7%
25 to 34	590.2	429.3	73%	14%	12%
35 to 44	651.3	513.5	79%	16%	14%
45 to 64	1,543.90	1,396.20	90%	38%	39%
65 and up	941	1,013.10	108%	23%	28%
Total	4,115.00	3,621.50	88%	100%	100%
Michigan as of 10/29	16Total Vote	EV20	EV20/16Tot	Pct of 16	Pct of 20
18 to 24	313.6	138.6	44%	7%	6%
25 to 34	718.9	210.2	29%	15%	9%
35 to 44	661.9	226.1	34%	14%	9%
45 to 64	1,997.80	799.5	40%	42%	33%
65 and up	1,107.90	1,077.00	97%	23%	44%
TOTAL	4,799.00	2,451.30	51%	100%	100%
Pennsylvania as of 10/29	16Total Vote	EV 27Oct	EV20/16Tot	Pct of 16	Pct of 20
18 to 24	596.2	136.7	23%	10%	6%
25 to 34	858.9	236.2	27%	14%	11%
35 to 44	887.6	234.8	26%	14%	11%
45 and 64	2,353.90	648.4	28%	38%	31%
66 and up	1,468.40	856.9	58%	24%	41%
TOTAL	6,165.00	2,112.90	34%	100%	100%

While in each state the youth vote is high, it’s still a lower percentage of the total early vote in 2020 than the youth vote was of the total vote in 2016.  Nationally, the Census data shows that in 2016, 8% of the votes came from 18-24s and 15% came from 25-34s; the 2016 Early Vote data does not suggest that those numbers will be different in 2020. Arguably, youth are much more willing to vote in person during a pandemic, and they may be more likely to procrastinate and turn in their ballots later, so I’m not saying that youth won’t end up swinging the election by turning out in dis-proportionately greater numbers than ever before. However, we shouldn’t take it for granted.

Turning out the Youth Vote

Last night on a call with senior Biden organizers, I was the turd in the punch bowl -- we were sharing good news about the election and someone brought up the CIRCLE data about youth participating in much greater numbers, etc. -- I burst their bubble by citing the data above. BUT, there are still four days left -- everyone should talk to at least five (hopefully ten) people under 30 to make sure they have a plan, and if not send them to https://iwillvote.com AND, then ask them to get 5 friends to vote.  I’m hoping that all the under 30 voters are just waiting until this weekend to get their ballots (or they’re already in the mail) or decided they really want to vote in person.  Younger voters are more likely to support Biden, so improving turnout in this demographic could be critical to a Democratic victory.  While I’m all for sharing positive news (and the polling overall has been very strong for Biden the past few days), the election is several days away and there’s no place for complacency.

There could be a number of reasons why the youth percentage of the early vote ends up being lower than their percentage of the final vote, and it would be awesome if the people who will benefit from the outcome of this election for the longest time were able to further influence it.

Update -- Additional thoughts:

One reader commented "I think it would be more productive to compare the change in youth participation to the percentage of their share of the population from election to election. Otherwise you're comparing apples to oranges." That's a good point, and if the relative proportion of people in each age group shifted significantly from 2016 to 2020, then my analysis would be flawed. The chart below shows that the proportion of each age group in the US Citizen Voting Age population hasn't changed much in the past four years (there's no data for 2020, so I can't see what the specific 2018-2020 change was)

Notes / Data Sources:

Early vote, from the US Elections Project at https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html

2016 Total Vote from US Census -- Reported Voting and Registration, by Age, for States: November 2016 https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/voting-and-registration/p20-580.html [Table 4c]

Adjustments:

GA - spread 58.983K Early Votes of unknown age proportionally

GA - adjusted census number proportionally to account for Census claiming 4,246 total votes vs GA SecState 4,115

MI - adjusted census number proportionally to account for Census claiming 4,713 total votes vs MI SecState 4,799

PA - adjusted census number proportionally to account for Census claiming 6,008k total votes vs PA SecState 6,165

The Circle graphic that drove me to write this:

Available at: https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/absentee-and-early-voting-youth-2020-election