Youth Vote Update — October 28

by NextGen America Executive Director, Ben Wessel

Before jumping in, a quick reminder to RSVP for our final Youth Vote Vibe Check this Friday! We’ll be giving a last look at polling on young voters.

Now for the rest of our update. Major takeaway from NBC News?

BIG NUMBERS OF THE DAY

• Our friends at CIRCLE find youth voter registration for the year is up across the board in NGA states, including +20% in MI and AZ compared to 2016 levels. That means more potential young voters for us to GOTV.
• 4,193,175 first-time voters have already voted early and nearly 40% of these voters are under 30 years old (a jump of 8pts compared to 2016). This is really important because it suggests we’re not just “cannibalizing” our eventual Election Day vote, we’re bringing new people into the process.

• One more point to prove we’re not cannibals from Harrison in Raleigh: 85% of 18–29 year old North Carolinians who’ve *already* voted are first-time or infrequent voters (receipts here)

FLORIDA

• All eyes are always on Florida (read Steve Schale’s latest FL update if you haven’t yet), and we’re starting to see hand-wringing about the turnout of registered Democrats. But we’re watching the high rate of young voters with no party affiliation (“NPAs”) returning their ballots. We know that these voters predominately favor Biden.

• FL is always close and we’re not getting cocky. Instead, we’re pushing young people to drop off their ballots in drop boxes or at polling places, rather than put them in the mail. Check out Abel from our team quoted in The Daily Beast: “We never went in expecting to get 90 to 100 percent of all these mail-in ballots turned in,” Iraola said. “But it does put the onus on us to do the work and get people to drop off their mail-in ballots or go vote early.”

PA UPDATE

Let’s keep it up,

Ben

P.S. Remember to sign up to volunteer for GOTV!

P.P.S I had to share this amazing front page from the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier in Iowa, featuring NextGen Iowa’s “Goat Out The Vote” event. Iowa is a true toss-up at the Senate and Presidential level (Biden is heading there this weekend) and we’re so proud of our work: