This week, Harvard University’s Institute of Politics released the latest edition of its Harvard Youth Poll, surveying a national sample of Americans aged 18-29. The results revealed deep dissatisfaction with current economic conditions and the performance of the second Trump administration, and suggested that enthusiasm for electoral participation is notably lower this year among young Republicans than it was in the 2018 and 2022 midterms. Among likely voters under the age of 30, the Harvard poll found that Democrats led Republicans in the generic congressional ballot by 63 percent to 26 percent.
Such results are eye-catching, both for the lopsided margin and for the partisan shift that has occurred since 2024. Two years ago, the 18-29 age cohort favored Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by somewhere between 11 and 19 points, depending on whether national exit polls or a Pew Research Center post-election analysis produced the most accurate estimate. Either way, this was the best performnce by Republicans among young voters in a national election since 2014, and in a presidential election since 2004. If the Harvard findings of a 37-point gap hold—and this week’s national New York Times survey gives the Democrats an even wider lead of 44 points among voters under 30—Democrats will have fully reversed the pro-GOP swing of two years ago.
It’s nice to be the favorite party of the young, but such a distinction only goes so far. Citizens under 30 dependably have the lowest turnout rates of any age range, and they are especially likely to sit out non-presidential elections. In 2022, only 26 percent of eligible citizens aged 18-29 showed up to vote, compared to 64 percent of those over the age of 60. Even a dramatic surge in support among this sector of the electorate can only deliver a limited number of new votes.
A less examined but more strategically important age group is those in their 30s and 40s. Many Americans first become engaged in politics during this life stage, and some are still developing firm views and preferences. As a result, they represent a significantly larger slice of the overall electorate—the Timespoll estimates that voters between the ages of 30 and 44 will outnumber those between 18 and 29 by a 2-to-1 ratio this November—but can also exhibit significant partisan shifts from one election to the next. According to Pew surveys, voters aged 30–49 preferred the Democrats by a 21-point margin in 2018, by 12 points in 2020, by 7 points in 2022, and by just 2 points in 2024. The Times poll found a Democratic generic ballot advantage of 22 points among voters between 30 and 44—roughly matching the party’s advantage in 2018, the last national “blue wave” election. (The two survey outfits use slightly different age range cutoffs, so comparisons can’t be exact.)
Subgroup estimates can be noisy, and other surveys might find somewhat narrower margins. But even if the movement back to the Democrats among voters in their 30s or 40s this year isn’t quite as large in percentage terms as that among those in their teens or 20s, the Democrats will still gain many more raw votes from the older group because there are many more of them in the active electorate. Especially in places with populations that are collectively older than the national average, such as Maine or Iowa, any significant shift among a millennial generation now heading toward middle age will be much more consequential than a comparable swing among the much smaller minority of Gen Z-ers who will cast ballots in 2026.
It’s often assumed that young people are naturally liberal and become more conservative as they grow older, even though there isn’t a lot of clear evidence that this is a reliable pattern. But it is indisputable that the aging process converts many previous non-voters into voters. There’s no guarantee that those who join the ranks of the politically active for the first time later in life will closely resemble their generational peers who have been voting since they turned 18, and so a generation can evolve politically from one election to the next simply by absorbing freshly mobilized members. In 2024, the national climate was reflected in the collectively pro-Republican tilt of newly registered voters. In 2026, with Trump’s ratings in decline and the Democrats on the political offensive, this trend has reversed along with the prevailing political winds. We’re less than two weeks away from finding out whether resurgent popularity among the “almost young” (to borrow a phrase from Leonard Cohen) is strong enough to carry Democratic candidates to victory despite an unfavorable electoral map.