Young voters were key to Donald Trump’s path to the White House, with the demographic following national headwinds shifting to the right. The change dealt a critical blow to Democrats, who led the group by double digits in 2020. 

In the race for the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris and President-elect Trump fought for young voters, aged 18-29, as they battled for the Oval Office. 

Trump won his second term in office on Nov. 6 when the Associated Press called enough states for the former president to have a majority of electoral votes. 

Trump won all seven key battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He carried the Electoral College with 312 electoral votes, compared to Harris’ 226. Trump also won the national popular vote with final results still waiting to be reported as of Sunday. 

Trump’s decisive win in the Electoral College and the national popular vote was driven by voting shifts in many key demographics, including young voters. Young voters made up approximately 14 percent of all ballots cast in the 2024 election, according to exit polling conducted by Edison Research and analyzed by Tufts University. The analysis found a focus on the economy among young voters, where Trump had a distinct advantage, as a key driver of this rightward shift for young voters. 

Young men were a key component of the shift, with Trump winning the group by 14 points, according to the Tufts University analysis. 

Trump made major gains among young voters in Iowa, leading Iowa youth voters by 14 points and contributing to his decisive lead in the state where he won by approximately the same margin, according to the same analysis by Tufts University. The lead was a massive shift from 2020 when Biden was favored by one point among young voters in the state. 

Nationally, Harris won young voters by six percentage points in 2024, down 15 percentage points from Biden’s 25-point lead in 2020. This was Harris’ best performance among any age demographic. Trump gained 19 percentage points, loosening Democrats’ grip on young voters in 2024. 

“That’s really catastrophic, of course, for Democratic candidates,” said Mack Shelley, an Iowa State University political science professor. “That’s probably a couple of million votes right there. That’s enough to do in any presidential campaign and drag a whole lot of local or statewide candidates down [in] the process, too.” 

Not only did Trump carry the White House, but Republicans also clinched control of the U.S. Senate and are poised to narrowly hold onto their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Shelley said young voters’ drive toward Trump was one of several key demographic swings that doomed Democrats’ performance on Nov. 5. Young voters were one of the groups that helped deliver Biden his narrow victory in 2020 and now helped Trump clinch control of the Oval Office. 

“The impact of younger voters was much, much different than it had been before,” Shelley said. “So, the Democrats, I think it’s obvious, were hoping that they were going to be able to ride a bit of a youth revolt against Trumpism and extremism, but it turned out to be almost the exact opposite.”

Trump’s improvement among young voters can be attributed to large gains made among white voters, where he was favored by 10 points in 2024. Biden led the group by six points in 2020 — showing a 16-point swing toward Trump in 2024. More specifically, white male voters were driving the gender gap, with 63 percent of the group voting for Trump compared to 35 percent who voted for Harris. 

Gender gap drives small lead for Harris

A large part of this shift was young men’s swing away from Democrats to Trump. He won young men by 14 percentage points, compared to Biden’s 15 percentage point lead over Trump among the demographic in 2020 — a 29 percentage point swing. 

Trump also made gains among young women in 2024. Harris still leads the group but by less than Biden did in 2020. Trump gained seven percentage points among the demographic in 2024, despite Harris still holding a lead in the group. 

The Tufts University analysis shows the gap between young men’s and women’s votes in 2024 is stark, nearly 32 points, but on par with the overall gender gap this election. This stark difference was driven by young white men’s preference for Trump with him having a 28-point lead among the group. However, young white women and Latino men were evenly divided between Harris and Trump. 

There were several drivers of this gender gap including the issues that each candidate focused on in their campaign, said Timothy Hagle, a University of Iowa political science professor. 

“Democrats focused heavily, again, as they did in 2022 on the abortion issue, and I suppose that might be something that directly affects young women [more], for a variety of reasons, than it does young men,” Hagle said. 

The economy was a top issue for a large share of both young male and female voters, but young men were more likely to say it was their top issue than young women, according to the Tufts University analysis of AP VoteCast exit polling. 

Shelley said because the economy was a more important issue for young men, it drove the group’s preference for Trump. 

“The thing that seems to be at the top of mind for, well, younger male voters, but a lot of women voters as well, who were supporting Trump, was about the economy,” Shelley said. “The economic doldrums were pretty much what kept Harris and Democrats in general from getting very much traction.” 

However, the messaging that each candidate featured on the campaign trail also influenced how much young voters swung for Trump in 2024. 

Hagle said Harris’ surrogate speakers were negatively messaging young men, and polling showed the vice president losing the group at the end of her campaign. 

Former President Barack Obama chastised young Black men for their reservations about a female president.

Drake Riddle, the secretary of the UI College Republicans, said the negative messaging has made young men put off by Democrats. 

“I’ve seen men being treated as less than women, as was pretty much the campaign of Kamala Harris was to almost degrade men, to bring women up,” Riddle said. “And I believe Republicans believe that we should all be equal.” 

Economy drives youth vote for Trump

The economy has consistently ranked as one of the key issues this election, and that rings true even for young voters, 40 percent of which said it was their top issue, according to a Tufts University analysis of AP VoteCast exit polling. 

Other key issues ranked high among young voters’ responses; immigration ranked second at 11 percent and 13 percent said abortion was their top issue. 

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Those top issues correlated to an advantage for Trump. Those who chose the economy and immigration were very likely to choose Trump, and those who chose abortion favored Harris. 

“The chickens really came home to roost this time around, just because of the national obsession with inflation,” Shelley said. 

Erich Profeta, a first-year UI student, said he voted for Trump mainly because of immigration but also because of the former president’s record on the economy. 

“Look at groceries going up, gas going up — maybe some of those things do or don’t have to do with the president, but I think a lot of it does, or a lot of it can be affected by the president,” Profeta said. “From what I know, the last four years, it’s all gone up. When Donald Trump was in office, it might have gone up once, and then back down and then steady for the rest of his term.” 

Under Biden, inflation has skyrocketed to the highest it has been in decades, collectively 20 percent from the start to end of Biden’s time in office. Experts attribute the inflation mainly to supply chain issues during the COVID-19 pandemic and only partially to federal spending during the pandemic. 

For voters who chose the economy as their top issue, 60 percent voted for Trump and 38 percent chose Harris. On abortion, a keystone issue for Harris’ campaign, voters who chose it as their top issue favored Harris by 59 percentage points. 

“To the extent that the economy was a higher priority for voters, they were going to trend towards Trump rather than Harris, just because of the state of the economy these days, and what we’ve experienced over the last couple of years,” Hagle said. 

The gender gap is also clear when looking at issue preference among young men and women. Young men were more likely than young women to say their top issue was the economy, with 42 percent of men and 39 percent of women saying as much. 

Young women were more likely than men to say abortion was their top issue, with 17 percent of women and 8 percent of men indicating so in AP VoteCast surveys. 

Of those young voters who said abortion was their top issue, 79 percent voted for Harris and 20 percent voted for Trump. 

Shelley said the issue helped Harris’ performance among young women who are affected more directly by the issue. 

“Abortion was a main thrust, and that’s rather obviously a gendered issue, which will help get support from whatever chunk of the electorate who really attuned to that as a primary issue,” Shelley said. 

Stella Logsdon, a fourth-year UI student, said she voted for Harris because of the state of reproductive freedoms in Iowa after Iowa Republicans enacted a near-total abortion ban last summer. Logsdon said Harris represents her beliefs on reproductive rights and abortion. 

“I just like the idea of having a government system and a health care system that enables that kind of safety, and it provides me with that sort of empowerment to let me do what I want with my body,” Logsdon said. 

Harris focused on Trump’s celebration of overturning Roe v. Wade, a federal precedent that protected the right to an abortion, and his role in overturning the precedent. 

Trump appointed three of the six conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justices who voted to overturn the case. Harris said Trump could not be trusted not to sign a national abortion ban after he said he would leave it up to the states.  

Youth voter turnout comparable to 2016

Overall youth turnout is down from 2020 but on par with 2016 levels, according to the Tufts University analysis. Turnout for 2020 is estimated at 42 percent, down from roughly 50 percent in 2020. 

However, the analysis of swing state youth participation found that it averaged about 50 percent through the seven key battleground states. 

Youth voters had a marginal share of the total vote this election compared to 17 percent in 2020 and 19 percent in 2016. This is a large change in voting behavior, as young voters are considered some of the least likely to consistently vote, compared to other age groups. 

Shelley said youth voters being a large group of the voting population is a relatively new phenomenon that has risen since the 2016 and 2018 elections where young voters made up large shares of the voting population. 

“That very large spike in voting by young people was probably the single major reason why Republicans got clobbered in that midterm election,” Shelley said, referring to the 2018 midterm election in which Democrats gained control of Congress. 

Hagle said the new age of information from podcasts to social media has helped engage young voters in politics and engage traditionally low-propensity voters.