Americans are open to lowering the voting age

New research from the Vote 16 Research Network shows opposition to lowering the voting age is not rigid. Support jumps more than 10% when voters see messages highlighting young people's competence.

Rohan Rajesh, (second right) with fellow student poll workers and Gilberto Zelaya, vice president of the Montgomery County Maryland Board of Elections (far left), at Clarksburg High School in Clarksburg, Maryland, October 2019. (Photo courtesy of Rohan Rajesh and Voice of America)

Many Americans are open to lowering the voting age to 16. And when Americans hear messages about the competence of the young people in their communities - especially when they learn that 16 and 17 year olds serve as election workers - support for including them in our democracy jumps even higher.

This spring, we worked with colleagues across the Vote 16 Research Network to design survey questions we could use to better understand Americans’ attitudes toward lowering the voting age. We are so grateful to all of you - community leaders, scholars from the US and abroad, students, and more - who shared your unique perspectives and improved the design of this study.

Our study included 2,000 responses from a sample of Americans drawn to be broadly representative of the American population. Consistent with past studies, we found support for lowering the voting age clustered at around 1/3 of voters with slightly more support for participation in local elections.

Support from our respondents for Vote 16 policy in local, state, and national elections in the United States.

This support is polarized by party identification. Nearly half of Democrats support lowering the voting age to 16. This support among Democrats suggests that lowering the voting age is politically viable right now in communities with a large Democratic majority. 36.5% of all Americans - nearly 120 million people - live in a state with Democratic control of both the legislature and governor’s office.

And while lowering the voting age is not as popular with Republicans, there is room to build on the significant minority of Republican voters who support this policy. Approximately one in five Republicans supports lowering the voting age. That means that there are just over 7 million Republicans across the country who support this policy.

Just based on these fundamentals, there is potential for advocates of lowering the voting age in the United States to build a winning cross-partisan coalition to advance the policy.

Support from our respondents for lowering the voting age broken down by party affiliation.

But our study showed even more reasons for US based Vote 16 movement leaders to be encouraged. We randomized our respondents into treatment and control groups. The control group shared their support for lowering the voting age based on this statement.

Officials Consider Lowering Voting Age to 16 for Local Elections

For years, a number of localities in the U.S. have allowed 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in local elections. Local government leaders here are now considering lowering the voting age to 16 for local elections. A public meeting was held recently to discuss the issue.

For the treatment group, however, we shared various messages that emphasized different ideas respondents might associate with lowering the voting age (young people are competent, young people pay taxes and it’s unfair to exclude them, young people in your community share your values, and young people are easily influenced by others).

Here is an example of the most persuasive vignette we tested:

Officials Consider Lowering Voting Age to 16 for Local Elections, Area Teens Say They Are Knowledgeable Enough

For years, a number of localities in the U.S. have allowed 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in local elections. Local government leaders here are now considering lowering the voting age to 16 for local elections. A public meeting was held recently to discuss the issue.
 
At the meeting, a number of 16 and 17-year-olds spoke in favor of the proposal. Mary Clark, who is 16 years old, spoke about her experience with politics. “It is important to be involved so I regularly attend public meetings and have served as a volunteer poll worker during elections,” Clark said. Across the board, the 16 and 17-year-olds explained that they use multiple sources to learn about the candidates and issues and are ready to cast an informed vote.

What we found was extraordinary. The opposition to lowering the voting age is much softer than we and other scholars had predicted. When respondents were prompted to think about the competence of the young people in their community, support for lowering the voting age jumped from just over 1/3 of respondents to nearly half of respondents.

Below are results from another experiment that exposed respondents to a variety of messages and asked their opinion after each message they read.

Support for lowering the voting age moved considerably in response to various messages we tested. The competence message was most persuasive.

Our study has major implications for advocates and policy makers interested in lowering the voting age in the United States. In most parts of the country, it is either politically viable to lower the voting age right now or there is a latent bi-partisan political coalition of support that could be mobilized. And because opposition to the policy is so moveable, there is a substantially larger playing field of communities where the movement could successfully advance a campaign to lower the voting age with sufficient investment in effective persuasion efforts.

We believe these results also have important implications for community partners interested in youth voting rights for Americans over 18 as well. In recent years, efforts like Power the Polls have dramatically increased the number of young people serving as poll workers. Previous studies from our colleagues at CIRCLE have already shown that youth voter turnout increases in precincts where young people serve as poll workers. What our study - and especially the competence treatment that highlights youth poll workers - shows is that these efforts to recruit more young poll workers may also help all Americans conceive of their democracy in a more inclusive way.

When Americans see that young people are a part of co-creating our democracy, it feels more intuitive to support policies that fully include young people in elections. We look forward to working with all of you to build on this research and learn more about what happens when we talk to people about lowering the voting age!

Mike Hanmer is a Professor in the Government and Politics Department and Research Director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland.

Sam Novey is a Consulting Community Scholar at the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland.