Republicans' 2024 gains among young voters were reversed in the midterms, as voters under 30 overwhelmingly preferred Democratic congressional candidates.
Seventy-three percent of voters under 30 cast ballots for Democratic midterm candidates for the House of Representatives, and young men swung back to Democrats, according to exit polls from the Nov. 3 election. Only 25% of young voters cast ballots for Republican candidates.
Democrats won 62% of voters ages 30-44 and 52% of those 45-64. Republicans' strongest age group was Americans 65 and over, who split their votes precisely 50-50 between the two parties.
In 2024, 54% of the young voters favored Vice President Kamala Harris and 43% of them voted for President Donald Trump. In 2018, the last
time Democrats enjoyed a strong midterm election, 68% of young voters cast ballots for Democrats in the House.
"I didn't think I would see another set of numbers that were so favorable to Democrats (as) in 2018 ever again," Director of Polling John Della Volpe, of the Harvard Youth Poll, who has studied young voters since 2000, told USA TODAY.
Della Volpe noted that final 2026 election numbers are still incomplete but "if those numbers hold in this cycle, it would have matched or exceeded that number," adding, "That is striking."
A swing from Trump to Democrats
A vote analysis from Tufts University's Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) found that 15% of young people who voted for Trump in 2024 voted for a Democratic House candidate in the midterms.
CIRCLE noted on a press call that the Nov. 5 report was its first public estimates. The organization plans to release more precise data in months ahead, after all of the election voter reports are complete.
However, the change in young voters' partisan preference may also be a reflection of 2024 voters who stayed home this cycle and new 2026 voters who turned out.
"Shifts among demographic groups don't necessarily mean that young voters changed their minds. It can reflect who showed up versus who stayed home, and young people who are new to the electorate can produce that same aggregate shift," Newhouse Director Leela Strong, of Tufts University's CIRCLE, said on a Nov. 5 press call.
Della Volpe said it will be some time before the data is able to explain that, but he speculated it was a different group of voters than in 2024.
"I think it will probably take some time before the data science and the voter file people kind of collect the data to figure that out. However, it was likely a different composition," Della Volpe said.
Data from The New York Times' Voter Trends notes that voters ages 18-29 had a 33-point swing to Democrats, when compared with 2024 votes for Harris, while voters 30-44 had a 24-point swing to Democrats. Voters ages 45-64 had a 13-point swing and voters 65 and older had a 6-point swing.
In 2024, young men swung towards Trump and played a role in sending him back to the White House. In 2024, 49% of young men voted for Trump and 48% voted for Harris.
But in the midterms, young men swung back to Democrats. Polling ahead of the election indicated that the young male group preferred Democrats and exit polling found 66% of males 18-29 years old voted Democratic.
Della Volpe told USA TODAY in October that "a vote for Donald Trump did not mean that younger people or younger men were signing up to be Republicans for life."
Strong said that in addition to young men, young rural voters and young people without any college experience also swung back to Democrats. CIRCLE, which studies young people's civic engagement and political participation, also reported that the economy was a top concern for the young voter cohort.
Della Volpe told USA TODAY that he wasn't necessarily surprised by the overwhelming Democratic support by young voters because in the most recent Harvard Youth Poll, his researchers found that only 9% of young voters thought the country was headed in the right direction.
"We certainly saw all the underlying factors that led to this," he said. "At the end of the day, younger men in particular responded to a series of what they considered to be broken promises."
Della Volpe previously told USA TODAY that in his focus groups in 2024, young voters told him they were voting based on the economy. In 2026, the Harvard Youth Poll found that, two years into the Republican administration, economic concerns still plagued young voters.
Low youth turnout
Young people represented about 11% of the electorate, and the young voter turnout rate landed at 27%, according to estimates by CIRCLE, which is 4 points lower than the group's record-high 31% participation in the 2018 midterms.
A separate estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau, though, says that 36% of 18-29 year olds voted in 2018.
Regardless, this year's 27% turnout for young voters is high when compared with the group historically voting at a rate between 15% to 20% in midterms.
Exit polls said that while young voters made up 11% of the electorate, 20% came from voters 30-44 years old, 34% from voters 45-64 and 36% from voters 65 and older.
Strong said that this third consecutive midterm cycle of young voter turnout above 27% suggests young voters have become more engaged in politics.
"It tells us that young people are sending a clear signal that they want to take action and drive change, and that this is no longer just an anomaly around a single election," Strong said. "It is closer to a repeatable feature in the midterm electorate."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Young voters, including men, swung dramatically back towards Democrats
