Democrats: Harness data to find and engage unregistered young voters

The youth vote is the great white whale of progressive politics. Each election cycle, we hear rumblings of a generational shift that will change the face of the electorate. But, since 18-year-olds were given the right to vote in 1971, turnout among the youngest cohort has declined in nearly every election.

Will 2024 be any different? With new polls showing Donald Trump and Joe Biden in a close race for young voters, this slice of the electorate is once again in the spotlight.

Three years ago, polling done by Ipsos for FiveThirtyEight showed that 78 percent of young people said they planned to vote in 2020. 

But according to the Census, voter turnout that year was lowest among those ages 18-24, at 51.4 percent.

Before the 2022 election, 40 percent of Gen Z voters told the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics that they intended to vote. The actual turnout was 23 percent, according to CIRCLE, the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.

That’s an improvement — one of the highest youth voter turnouts in a midterm election since 18-year-olds got the vote — but older, more conservative voters still make up the lion’s share of voters. They’re the ones electing lawmakers who won’t vote for climate action, gun safety, abortion rights, voting rights, gender equality, racial justice and all the other issues that many younger voters care about.

What needs to change to upset this apple cart? First and foremost, young people must believe that politics can make a difference in their lives — today. They need to know that the government they elect will genuinely tackle the issues that are so important to them, now and for their futures. 

We know that young people will march on state capitols to demand action on gun violence, but will they follow, support and turn out for candidates who’ll vote that way? 

The fact is that without politics and elections, we don’t get the change we need.

Harvard’s Insitute of Politics Director John Della Volpe says Gen Z are values-based voters motivated by threats to their basic rights — clean air and water, feeling safe in school and reproductive rights. They’re not going to respond to partisan messages — party politics mostly turns them off.

They want to stop the attacks on those who are more vulnerable themselves, specifically members of the LGBTQ community. And they worry about the daily threats to democracy and the rise of autocracy.

The next election will hinge on voter turnout. Partisan appeals fall on deaf ears with young voters, who have a more transactional than ideological perspective. They want action on gun violence, climate and abortion and they have to be confident in Democrats when they say they’re the party that supports a progressive agenda. 

To close the gap between Gen Z and other younger voters’ intentions to vote and their actual turnout, Democrats can clearly show how, with Joe Biden in the White House, a strong House majority and 60 votes (or close enough) in the Senate, we can pass bills in a week that Republicans have been holding up for decades.

But that’s not enough. If the problem has been that too few registered voters believe politics matters, let’s register a new generation open to the possibility that it can.

Let’s talk to young voters about why voting is important and find common ground with them based on their most deeply held values and beliefs.

New ways of using voter, polling and consumer data make it possible to build a “DNA profile” of a new electorate, based not on partisan leanings but on values and beliefs. 

Last year in Kentucky, for example, a coalition mobilized to defeat the anti-abortion referendum Amendment 2, in a state that Donald Trump won by 14 points. Organizers used a new micro-targeting tool called Political Explorer to identify, map and contact voters energized by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.

By matching demographic data with voter file information, campaigners built a database that unlocked the keys to an abortion rights-defending electorate. They were able to target 763,363 supporters to register — including young people, low-income voters, single women, Hispanics and African Americans, while separating Evangelicals and gun owners from the group.

The result? Over 1 million voter contacts and 6,875 new voters were registered — resulting in 65,643 additional votes — which Political Explorer called “the foundation of the 66,598-vote victory margin.”

A portal is now open into a new universe of voters, engaged more by issues than partisanship, and driven to support candidates and causes that represent the values they hold most dear. They want action on specific issues. 

One of the reasons people feel alienated from politics is their feeling that politics has given up on them. They don’t have a stake in what goes on in Congress — but they should. 

Unregistered voters are the secret key to the next election. Instead of giving up on them, let’s bring them in.

Alan Rosenblatt is a digital and social media strategist and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University and American University and a partner at Unfiltered.Media.