Pop superstar Taylor Swift might have helped register enough voters in a single day last September to swing close races in multiple states, with turnout experts predicting a strong youth vote for the 2024 presidential election.
After an Instagram post by Swift, a record of more than 30,000 people signed up through Vote.org during National Voter Registration Day, many of them teens who will be eligible to vote in this fall’s election. Among the top states for those new registrations: Texas, California, New York, Illinois and Florida.
Swift’s fanbase tends to be younger and more liberal than the country overall, and although the new voter registrations aren’t likely enough to affect the presidential election, several 2022 U.S. House races were decided by fewer than 1,000 votes, including in Colorado where Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert won her 2022 reelection by 546 votes
Experts say there’s every indication youth voting will be high again this year, as it was in 2020.”The younger generation is really starting to connect the dots between what they care about and participation numbers,” said Andrea Hailey, the CEO of nonpartisan Vote.org, which registered 279,400 new voters last year. “When you have someone registering 30,000 votes at a time it absolutely can have an impact.”
Youth-voting turnout has long been a concern for experts who note that millions of potential voters just don’t bother: In the 2020 election, about 48% of eligible voters aged 18-29 cast a ballot, compared with 73% of people aged 65-74. In 2016 only about 40% of young people voted. Hailey said about 80% of the people who Vote.org registers actually cast ballots in the next election.
