Young People Are Fascinating—Just Don't Expect Them to Decide the 2026 Election

“Young Voters Vehemently Oppose Trump, ICE” reported the Yale Youth Poll this week, drawing on a national survey conducted in March that revealed substantial erosion of the president’s job approval since last year among respondents under the age of 30. Two years ago, the Trump-led Republican ticket had performed surprisingly well among this age group—especially men—compared to 2020 and 2016. But the Yale analysis, in concert with other recent polling, suggests that the 2024 results reflected a temporary shift in the preferences of young adults rather than a more enduring realignment. Looking ahead to the 2026 midterms, Democrats once again far outpace Republicans in the voting intentions of 18-to-29-year-olds.

The political views of the young dependably receive special attention among media analysts, for understandable reasons. Older people tend to find young people fascinating, and young people find themselves fascinating. Generation gaps and conflicts are familiar dramatic tropes upon which to hang stories, whether the young are portrayed sympathetically as idealists longing to transcend the hypocrisies of their elders or critically as naive narcissists who haven’t yet experienced the hard knocks of life. And, in a political world that places great value on the power of prediction, the youth politics of the moment can seem (sometimes misleadingly) to provide a vision of the nation’s future.

But anyone interested in the factors likely to foreshadow or affect the outcome of the midterm elections in November shouldn’t spend too much time obsessing over the preferences and priorities of the youngest cohort of citizens. Voter turnout is strongly and reliably correlated with age, and young adults are always much less likely than older generations to participate in elections—especially non-presidential contests. According to data compiled by the political scientist Michael McDonald, the turnout rate among eligible citizens between the ages of 18 and 29 was 49 percent in the 2024 election, compared to 76 percent among citizens aged 60 and over—a gap of 27 percentage points. In 2022, the gap in turnout between the 18–29 age cohort (26 percent) and the 60+ cohort (64 percent) was even larger, reaching 38 percentage points.

In the last midterm election four years ago, citizens under the age of 30 constituted just 12 percent of the national electorate, according to the Current Population Survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. That equalled the share of the electorate aged 75 and above. More voters had passed their 65th birthday (30 percent) than had yet to reach their 42nd (29 percent). The median age in the 2022 midterms was 54.

In a very close election, of course, shifts in a single slice of the voting public might be important. But many of the key races this year are being held in constituencies that are even older than the nation as a whole. Among the potentially competitive Senate seats up for election in 2026, only three (Georgia, Alaska, and Texas) are being held in states where the median age is below the national figure, while six (Maine, New Hampshire, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, and Iowa) are located in states with disproportionately elderly populations.

Over the past week or so, a debate has arisen in a few corners of the political media over whether or not Democratic candidates would be well-served by pursuing opportunities to reach young citizens by engaging social media personalities with youthful followings, such as the Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who hold controversial opinions on certain political issues. But a new poll of Democratic voters in Michigan released by the left-of-center group Data for Progress found that 80 percent of all respondents, and 89 percent of those over the age of 45, were either indifferent to Piker or hadn’t even heard of him. It’s common for political analysts to praise candidates and parties for courting teenagers and 20-somethings, or to suggest that they would reap an electoral benefit from doing so. But even successful attempts to bolster support among young social media users are likely to harvest fewer raw votes than more modest shifts in sentiment among older citizens who represent a much larger proportion of the overall electorate.

Because so much of our popular and media culture is dominated by content targeted to, and trends led by, young people, it’s only natural to assume that these generations must also hold the potential to be unusually influential in the realm of politics. But while Taylor Swift may be the biggest pop star in America, even she couldn’t lead Kamala Harris to the White House in 2024. As the full results of the Yale polling indicate, the GOP’s chief problem right now isn’t that young people are souring on the party—it’s that their parents and grandparents are too.