Youth Gender Breakdowns
I’ve received several requests for gender breakdowns for young voters so following up on yesterday’s post here they are for Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina.
For comparison, here are the gender statistics for all voters in these states.
I’d characterize these gender distributions as similar since voters age 18-25 have more missing data. I suspect the missing data follows the observed data, meaning that those with missing data are more frequently women.
The bottom line is that there is little evidence of a disproportionate surge of younger women (perhaps spurred by the Dobbs decision) or a surge of younger men (spurred by Donald Trump’s efforts to target these voters).
Keep in mind, if not obvious, these younger voters constitute a relatively small share of overall early voters. This is common. The earliest early voters tend to be highly participatory “super-voters” who are older, more likely to register with a party, and have a past voting history. Simply put they are people who made up their minds and feel comfortable with their voting decision.
If past patterns hold — which I expect they will — in the week ahead we should observe more younger voters entering the early electorate. We will soon get an answer to the question if younger women and men will vote.
Addendum: To answer a frequently asked question about my selection of age ranges, I report the age 18-25 breakdown primarily due to North Carolina. North Carolina reports aggregate age statistics in this age range (for mail ballot requests only). I would prefer to use an 18-29 age range, but for reporting consistency across the country I’m stuck with the North Carolina’s age ranges.