Most young people in the United States don’t vote. Fewer than half of Americans 18 to 29 voted in the 2016 presidential election — a gap of more than 15 points compared with the overall turnout.
This is not unique to the United States. Our new analysis of turnout for the most recent national general elections for heads of government in two dozen countries revealed that the general population’s voting rate exceeds the voting rate for young people in every single one of them.
The sample of two dozen countries isn’t representative of all nations. The 24 countries that had youth turnout data available were richer, more democratic and more literate than the 168 countries we contacted that didn’t. But the trends are still illustrative.
Why do young people vote less than their elders?
Almost a century ago, the political scientists Charles E. Merriam and Harold F. Gosnell identified several groups of Americans whose turnout rates were comparatively low, including young people, minorities, the less educated and the poor — all of whom are still less likely to vote today.
Three broad themes in political science research help explain the gap for young voters:
Habit formation. Voting is a habit formed over time, and one possible reason young people do it less frequently is they have had fewer opportunities to form and reinforce the habit. With time, people slowly turn from “habitual nonvoters” to “habitual voters,” as a paper by Eric Plutzer, a political scientist at Penn State, puts it.
That internal habit formation is reinforced externally, too, as Mark N. Franklin of Trinity College described in a book exploring aspects of voter turnout. People of all ages are influenced by what they see their friends and peers doing, and older people are more likely to have observed friends making the choice to vote, over the course of multiple election cycles.
Opportunity cost. Voting for the first or second time may also be harder than voting in subsequent elections. There is a direct opportunity cost for young adults, who may have less flexible employment schedules or less financial cushion to take time off to vote, or who may be in temporary housing situations where they lack deep community ties. There is also an indirect opportunity cost to learning the process of voting, like finding a polling place and learning about the candidates, according to Professor Franklin.
In the United States, some of those obstacles are, or once were, intentional. “I think of the U.S. as an anomaly when it comes to disparities in turnout across groups, and that those disparities are inseparable from a legacy of slavery and racism,” said Charlotte Hill, a doctoral candidate working on voting issues at the University of California, Berkeley. Raising voter turnout among all cohorts isn’t a universal goal among the politically powerful. And policies that make voting harder, like voter ID laws, may disproportionately affect low-propensity voters, including young people.
Alternative participation. Youth turnout data may be less dispiriting when viewed in the context of participation in other forms of political action. Lower election turnout in general over time has been accompanied by a rise in “other forms of citizen activism, such as mass protests, occupy movements and increased use of social media as a new platform of political engagement,” according to research by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Data suggests these trends are especially pronounced among young people. Compared with their elders in Germany, France and Britain, one analysis found, younger people are more likely to sign petitions, and more than twice as likely to participate in demonstrations.
All this suggests that the problem doesn’t come down to lack of interest, as research collected in John Holbein and D. Sunshine Hillygus’s recent book “Making Young Voters,” affirms. In recent years in the U.S., they write, “the number of young people who express an interest in elections (76 percent), care who is president (74 percent), have interest in public affairs (85 percent), and intend to vote (83 percent) is especially high.”
Is the gap between young and older voters consistent around the world?
No. Among the 24 countries we examined, the difference between youth and general turnout ranged from less than a percentage point to more than 20 points. And although the United States isn’t alone in seeing a gap, it fares pretty dismally, with the fifth-lowest youth turnout in the sample and the fourth-biggest gap between youth and overall turnout.
But before scolding young Americans, look at their elders. In countries where older people vote at higher rates, young people do, too.
Interestingly, that gap shrinks reliably as voting increases. In other words, the higher the youth voting rate, the closer the youth rate is likely to be to the overall rate.
What else predicts voter turnout?
Not much. In our analysis of overall voter turnout in the most recent national elections in 173 countries, participation cannot readily be predicted by any of more than 20 demographic and political-economy variables tested, including G.D.P. per capita, population size, type of government, development status and level of inequality. Even factors like compulsory and weekend voting didn’t reliably predict turnout in our survey.
You might imagine that people in rich, highly democratic countries are more likely to vote. And while that’s true in some places — Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden all saw turnout rates of 85 percent or higher in their last elections — citizens of nations with dependably free and fair elections don’t always take advantage of their enviable position. Switzerland’s 2019 presidential election, for example, had a youth turnout of 33 percent and an overall turnout of 45 percent. The United States, with its 64 percent overall turnout and 46 percent youth turnout in 2016, may also fall into this category.
What would boost youth turnout in the United States?
Experts emphasize that there is no single fix to increase youth turnout. Instead, research points to interventions on a short, medium and long-term timeline.
Short term: Get young people the specific information they need to register and make it to the polls. “It drives me nuts when I hear people say, ‘It’s not that hard to go vote,’ or ‘It’s not that hard to register,’” said Jan Leighley, a professor of government at American University. “Actually, the act of casting a ballot in an election is incredibly complex!”
She and other experts recommend mobilization efforts that lead first-time voters through steps like learning how to register and by what date; how a ballot works, what’s on it and how to fill it out; where to go to cast a vote and what to do when you get there. Research cited by Professors Holbein and Hillygus showed that flashier but less precise efforts, like celebrity-driven efforts to increase awareness of voting in general, don’t work.
Medium term: Work to reduce systemic barriers, especially to registration. The strong association between youth and overall turnout suggests that measures aimed at increasing voting for everyone will bring out young voters, too — and maybe even bring their participation rates closer to the general population’s.
In her book about voter turnout, Meredith Rolfe of the University of Massachusetts points out that in U.S. elections, turnout is higher in states that make it easier to register to vote, for example by permitting it right up to an election, having registration offices that are open on evenings and weekends and allowing absentee registration.
And Anthony Fowler of the University of Chicago found that permitting future voters to preregister at age 16 or 17, making them automatically registered on their 18th birthday, increases both registration and turnout by 2.1 percentage points.
In an Op-Ed for The New York Times last year, Charlotte Hill and Jacob Grumbach wrote that same-day registration can increase turnout for every age group — and especially for younger voters.
And an even more comprehensive approach, automatic voter registration — in which all citizens of voting age are added to the voter rolls without having to take any action — could have an additional benefit for young people, several scholars noted. Politicians “don’t have to mobilize and pay too much attention to youth, these days, because they know they’re not going to show up much at the polls, right?” Professor Leighley said. “If you get everyone registered, it has to change their calculations.”
Long term: Reimagine civics education. “When I talk with young people, the No. 1 reason that they’re not voting is because they feel embarrassed that they don’t know what’s on the ballot, and then you ask them to go find and it and they don’t know where to go,” said Rachael Cobb, an associate professor and the chair of political science and legal studies at Suffolk University.
One way to address that lack of preparation is to provide practical civics education — teaching more about how to vote. That can plant the seed early that voting is normal and worthwhile, and motivate young voters to overcome the short-term hurdles that might obstruct their participation in any particular election. In one study, youth turnout increased 5.7 percentage points after students were provided with an applied voting demonstration and given the chance to cast a practice ballot.
The most important thing to remember, experts said, is to consider these short, medium and long-term interventions in combination — any single one taken in isolation isn’t likely to drive a big increase in youth voter turnout.
“There is no one thing,” said Abby Kiesa, the director of impact for CIRCLE, a research organization focused on youth civic engagement. “We need all the things.”
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