THE YEAR OF THE YOUNG VOTER

The year 2020 has been a pandora’s box filled with many new and first experiences whether it is in people’s personal lives or as a society as a whole. One shocking first is how much young people are voting this election year—an atypical behavior for this demographic.

Young voters are running to the ballot boxes this year and are taking advantage of the early voting opportunity as well as the mail-in ballots.

According to a Tuft’s University data analysis, Texas, Florida and North Carolina are the leading states in young voters where Texas has about 753,000 young voters this year in comparison to 105,000 in 2016.

Who exactly are these young and motivated voters? A bit more than half of these voters are millennials and the other are Gen-Zers. (For a quick reminder, millennials are the 30-year-olds who just moved back home to their parents and not the 19-year-olds doing Tik Tok videos in their room—those are Gen-Zers).  

There is no solid data as to what has motivated these youngsters into voting, but some hypotheticals are not far from reach.

Many social media apps like Instagram and Snapchat have linked registration forms right from their apps to make registering that much easier. But registration doesn’t always equal voting. About 28 million 18-29-year-olds were registered to vote in 2016, but only 19 million voted, according to Catalyst data.

A Tuft’s University analyst told media company Politico that young voters are likely motivated by social justice activism as well as engaging with other young voters and this year’s voting options.

For generations, politicians and political parties have struggled to gain the young vote and motivate younger generations to vote. Little did they know that all that was needed was political mayhem and a pandemic.