Youth Voting Rose in 2018 Despite Concerns about American Democracy
After the 2016 presidential election, we found that youth were deeply uncertain about the state of democracy in the United States. Declining trust in government and democratic institutions has been growing over time, and according to the Pew Research Center, the election of a President that most Americans see as lacking respect for democratic institutions has brought public trust to historic lows. A resultant question is whether these concerns about democracy keep young people from participating in the political process; it is not unreasonable to imagine that higher levels of distrust in democracy might negatively impact youth voting. However, our previous research had already belied this narrative: we found that youth who were “cynical” about politics were actually more likely to say they would vote. Here we examine the relationship between young people’s electoral engagement and their views of the democratic system itself.
Overall, we find that young people’s level of trust in democracy, and their confidence about improving government, stayed the same between 2016 and 2018. Meanwhile, youth turnout increased dramatically from the 2014 to the 2018 midterm cycles, with some states registering turnout increases of more than 20 percentage points. Therefore, while distrust of democracy is related to lower rates of voting—and youth who voted in the 2018 midterms reported feeling more hopeful about the future than those who didn’t vote—young people’s doubts about democracy were not enough to keep them away from the ballot box in 2018.
A Mix of Concern and Hope for the Future
After the 2018 midterm elections, we asked a sample of young people, ages 18-24, to tell us about how the election results influenced their thinking about democracy and American values. We found that 82% of youth said they were concerned about the values of the American people because of the results of the election. A majority of young people, 57%, said they are losing faith in American democracy. At the same time, their concerns are mixed with a sense of hope about the future. While only 40% of young people thought that the United States government will improve over the next two years, nearly three quarters (70%) reported feeling hopeful that things will get better in America. It is possible that their hope is driven by a growing recognition that they can influence the political process, especially as they see other young people becoming increasingly engaged as activists and voters.
Interestingly, though we surveyed youth after two elections with vastly different results (2016, which saw the election of President Trump; and 2018, when Democrats won more than 40 seats and control of the House of Representatives), young people’s views about democracy and about the future of the country have not changed much in the past two years. In 2016, 83% of youth said they were concerned about the values of the American people, 55% said they were losing faith in American democracy, and 43% felt confident about democracy in the United States. Additionally, 44% thought the U.S. government would improve over the four years after the presidential election, while 68% reported feeling hopeful that things would get better. On all those statements, the responses given by youth after the 2018 midterms were strikingly similar, varying by no more than 4 percentage points.
All Youth Worried about Democracy, but Democratic Voters More So
After the 2018 midterms, concerns about the values of the American people were high among youth who voted for a Democratic House candidate (92%) and among those who voted for a Republican House candidate (87%). However, youth who voted for a Democratic candidate were much more likely to say they were losing faith in American democracy than those who voted for a Republican candidate: 66% vs. 32%. Conversely, youth who voted for a Republican candidate were more likely to say that the United States government will improve over the next two years, compared to those who voted for the Democratic candidate: 63% vs 42%. Optimism about the future was also related to vote choice: 90% of those who voted for a Republican candidate said they were hopeful about the future, compared to 77% of those who voted for the Democratic candidate. The fact that young people expressed these views just after the Democrats had what many consider a successful midterm cycle in 2018, may suggest that the current presidential administration and other entrenched, long-term issues in American politics influence their outlook far more than the outcome of the most recent election.
Looking back on 2016, when the relationship between vote choice and young people’s sentiments about democracy were even more pronounced, lends further credence to that idea. After that election, youth who voted for Hillary Clinton were much more likely to say they were losing faith in American democracy than those who voted for Trump: 72% vs. 16%. Meanwhile, youth who voted for Trump were much more likely to say that the United States government would improve over the next four years compared to those who voted for Clinton, 88% to 21%, and to say that they had hope for the future, 94% to 44%. Interestingly, regardless of who they voted for, youth were equally likely to say that they were motivated to get politically involved because of the results of the 2016 election. That motivation may have translated to action, as youth political engagement increased substantially between our pre-election poll in 2016 and our pre-election poll in 2018.
That increased political engagement and activism may be on reason why youth turnout was at an all-time high in the 2018 midterms. That said, young people who voted in the recent midterms were more likely than those who did not vote to say that they felt confident about democracy in the U.S., were hopeful things would get better, and that the U.S. government would improve over the next few years. This suggests that doubts and distrust of American democracy may have played a role in depressing the youth vote. Working to counter those negative sentiments, especially by giving young people opportunities to shape a democracy that they would trust, could be key to increasing participation even further. In particular, continuing to highlight, promote, and facilitate young people’s engagement—and the powerful idea that they can and do have an impact on American politics and on the future of the country—can perhaps serve as an important counterbalance to youth concerns about democracy, and may be an important strategy to further increase youth turnout in 2020 and beyond.
About our 2018 Poll
The survey was developed by CIRCLE at Tufts University, and the polling firm GfK collected the data from their nationally representative panel of respondents between November 8 and December 7, 2018. The study involved an online surveyed a total of 2,133 self-reported U.S. citizens aged 18 to 24 in the United States, with representative over-samples of Black and Latino youth, and of 18 to 21-year-olds.This survey is a follow-up to CIRCLE’s pre-election survey of 2,087 young people which was fielded in September of 2018. The survey series was designed such that 1,007 of the pre-election survey participants were re-contacted and participated in the post-election survey along with 1,126 new participants who only took the post-election survey. Therefore, this survey allows us to compare the same group of young people before and after the election. The margin of error is +/- 2.1 percentage points, except for the analyses of recontact sample (N = 1,007) which has a margin of error of +/- 3.0%. Unless mentioned otherwise, data below are for all the 18 to 24-year-olds in our sample.