The predominant feature of the 2024 election is that it was mostly driven by a massive shift of younger voters towards Trump. All of the other shifts that occurred– with respect to race and education– are largely subsidiary to this generational shift, because all of those other shifts were mostly driven by younger voters. The younger generation of voters– including those voters who will come of voting age for the next decade– have a serious and legitimate beef with our status quo moment. However, in an age of partisan polarization and close elections, the loose partisan affiliations of younger voters means they hold the keys to electoral outcomes for the foreseeable future.
The youngest generation of voters have many reasons to be unhappy with the last 4 years. Inflation drove an enormous generational transfer in economic well being. Younger people face impossible housing prices. People born between 1994 and 2014 (or so) should be called “Gen damaged”, suffering from massive disinvestment, essentially losing a year or more of societal investment in their education. The young adults in this generation are living in their parents’ basements and suffering from historic levels of social isolation and depression. A thousand studies will be written over the next 50 years dissecting the differential effects on the life course of the events of COVID-19 pandemic; what we can say now is that the effects, on average, will likely be very negative for the youngest generation. The older generation, in contrast, has benefited from expensive efforts (borne substantially by the younger generation, in the form of reduced schooling) to reduce mortality rates during COVID (which would have been almost entirely among older individuals); and experienced windfalls with respect to the increased value of their homes and the reduced burden of their mortgages.
Unsurprisingly, this unhappiness has spilled into the political realm.
Drawing from large scale surveys conducted by the CHIP50 consortium, we see that relative to 2020, the margin of support (the difference between Trump and Harris’ vote share) among voters 30 and under swung 25 points in Trump’s direction. Voters older than 50, by contrast, swung away from Trump by 7 points. Strikingly, if you sort through various subdemographics among the young, by race, gender, and education, they all swung substantially towards Trump; even college-educated women swung towards Trump by 23 points (young, college-educated men by a remarkable 45 points). Further, approval of the Biden administration among young Democrats was remarkably low; it is likely that some of the apparent drop in turnout among Democrats was driven by unenthusiastic, younger Democrats. Only 10% of younger Democrats strongly approved of Biden at the moment when he dropped out of the race (compared to 31% of older Democrats who strongly approved of Biden; or to the 33% of younger Republicans who strongly approved of Trump). The reason why the map systematically shifted red across the country was simply because a large demographic that is everywhere-- young people—shifted away from the Democrats.
The racial depolarization of the election was substantially driven by younger voters. The shift in margin of nonwhite younger voters was 35 points in Trump’s direction; among those older than 50, only 5 points.
Similarly, the continued increase in educational polarization in the electorate was much greater among younger voters. For example, among younger voters with a high school or less education the shift was 25 points in Trump’s direction; among older voters the shift was 7 points. Among young, hispanic men with high school or less education, Trump’s margin swung an incredible 69 points. It is likely that these shifts occurred in part because these groups suffered a double penalty: the aforementioned generational redistribution from young to old, and little prospective windfall from an increase in parental wealth.
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More generally, we see the most dramatic swings of approval for Biden and Trump among young voters. We tracked the approval of both Presidents for the last 4 years. The approval advantage that Biden had among younger voters at the beginning of his administration was about 20 points over Trump; by the time he dropped out of the race, that had switched to a 22 point deficit; an incredible 42 point swing. By comparison, for 30 plus voters, Biden swung from a 10 point advantage to a 12 point disadvantage—a 22 point swing. The point of crossover was about when inflation hit its apex, in the spring of 2022. Beyond that, we see a steady shift among the youngest cohorts towards identification with the Republican party since the high point of inflation in 2022.
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Younger voters thus do have well-earned grievances; but, as we saw in 2024, they also hold the keys to political power. In an age where political identity is determinative of vote choice, and pretty likely to be set by one's 30s, and the margins of victory slim, the swings in support by younger voters will be what drives victory for the foreseeable future. Younger voters punished Republicans in 2020; and the Democrats in 2024. Political parties beware: youth will be served, and the youth are unhappy. The party that can harness this anger will rule the (near) future.
[NOTE: These data are based on the CHIP50 pre-election survey.]
