The Young are Voting in Record Numbers, & They’re Voting Blue

Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash

Everyone seems to be voting early by mail this year, in fact 75 Million ballots have already been cast in 2020, that’s 1/3 of the entire registered electorate voting early.  More than 6.8 million people ages 18 to 29 have already cast their ballot for President, a 2 ½-fold increase over their voting level at this point four years ago.

Axios, as well as Survey Monkey did polls based on the age of voters in all 50 states, and both found that young voters 18-34 were far more likely to vote Biden in most states, and the younger you were, the higher chance you would vote for Biden.

With college students having to stay away from class, dorms, and overt keg parties during this pandemic, perhaps they have more time to fill out ballots this election?

Voter preference by age & state

As you can see, if only 18-34 year olds voted, Biden would win 40+ states in a landslide.  If only 55-64 year-olds voted the race would be a dead heat. But young people voting liberal is not anything new historically, the old political adage “whoever is not a liberal at 20 has no heart, whoever is not a conservative by 30 has no brain,” seems to hold true in 2020, even if nothing else does. (that liberal/conservative piece of wisdom is attributed to many, most commonly it’s associated with John Adams).

Survey Monkey broke down young people’s voting preference by education, as you can see as education increases so does the support for Biden.

Voter preference by Education Level 

checkout the survey monkey interactive polling data here.

What is also very interesting, is that after voters hit age 65, they switch back to being liberal.  There’s something about midlife crisis that loves a Trump.

National voter preference by age group

Part of why nearly every poll has Biden winning the election by some 8 points, is because young voters have been voting in such high levels, even in some red swing younger voters strongly supported Biden over Trump — including two pivotal ones, Texas (59%-40%) and Georgia (60%-39%), and even deep-red South Carolina (56%-43%).

So, will the youth finally saves us all, and swing an election?  After the 2016 race, where all the polling experts picked Hillary to win, no one has the confidence in polling anymore. But, if you still have some faith in the polls, you have to say all signs point to a Biden win.