This might partly be because 18-24 year olds have a history of poor turn-out at the polls in general. For 2020 (The last Presidential Election and a year of historically high turnout), The US Census Bureau has the 18-24 age range of US Citizens voting at a rate of 51.4% (Source, see Table 1, Row 9, Column L). The next lowest is 25-34 year olds at 60.3%. And it just goes up from there.
It’s a bit of a self-feeding cycle. Young people don’t vote, so politicians don’t care about them. Politicians don’t care about young voters, so young people don’t show up at the polls. Sure, if some magical politician could figure out how to get young people to the polls, there’s a lot of untapped potential. But, in reality, that’s balanced against the potential of tuning out older voters, who show up at the polls regularly. Politicians and activists have been doing everything they can to get young people to show up at the polls, since I was young enough to be the target demographic. That was decades ago, and it hasn’t helped much.
This might partly be because 18-24 year olds have a history of poor turn-out at the polls in general. For 2020 (The last Presidential Election and a year of historically high turnout), The US Census Bureau has the 18-24 age range of US Citizens voting at a rate of 51.4% (Source, see Table 1, Row 9, Column L). The next lowest is 25-34 year olds at 60.3%. And it just goes up from there.
It’s a bit of a self-feeding cycle. Young people don’t vote, so politicians don’t care about them. Politicians don’t care about young voters, so young people don’t show up at the polls. Sure, if some magical politician could figure out how to get young people to the polls, there’s a lot of untapped potential. But, in reality, that’s balanced against the potential of tuning out older voters, who show up at the polls regularly. Politicians and activists have been doing everything they can to get young people to show up at the polls, since I was young enough to be the target demographic. That was decades ago, and it hasn’t helped much.