Political Interest Declines Among Young Voters

The Associated Press polled young voters recently and learned that their interest and engagement in politics is declining. This Election Central story looks at the details of the poll and summarizes why this lack of democratic engagement is happening. 

This poll was conducted in July 2025. The data was collected by the NORC at the University of Chicago and the Associated Press. The NORC is a nonpartisan research organization that collects information such as this poll. Government agencies and other groups use this data to help guide and inform their policy recommendations and actions. 

How Was the Poll Conducted? 

The poll collected nationwide data between July 10 and July 14, 2025. A combination of online poll questions and telephone interviews gathered the responses from almost 1,500 people. There was an intentional focus on the youngest set of the voting population (ages 18-29) and there were 386 completed interviews of that youngest voter age range. 

The types of questions in the poll asked some broadly worded questions that gauged overall interest in politics. For instance, the poll asked respondents how important they viewed voting? And how closely do they follow politics in their media? The poll also asked people to rank the importance of a variety of issues, such as  

• the economy 

• health care 

• taxes 

• government spending 

• immigration 

• trade negotiations with other countries. 

What Does the Poll Say? 

The responses to the poll broadly suggest that younger voters are more disengaged with politics and political issues than middle aged voters or the voters who are 60 years old and older. In almost all of these specific issue areas, the 18-29 voter group had the lowest score when ranking how important they saw taxes, immigration, government spending, or health care. And the 60 years-old and over group consistently saw these as much higher in importance. The largest gap in opinion is in government spending. Less than half of the youngest voters saw government spending as an important issue but over 80 percent of the voters age 45 and older ranked this issue as personally important to them. 

It might not be such a surprise that 18- to 29-year-old voters care less about these types of issues when compared to their older voting counterparts. But what do they rank as important? The poll data shows that almost 80 percent of young voters put the economy as their issue of highest importance. Health care is the second highest issue. And taxes are third. When you stop and think about it, these three issues are the ones listed in the poll that are most likely to impact the current and future income of these young voters, so it might not be surprising that they top the list. 

How informed are these voters who answered the questions? How much of their time do they devote to keeping up with political issues? Thirty-four percent of those young voters who responded say that they do not follow U.S. politics closely at all. And almost half of those same voters say that they only pay somewhat close attention to the political issues that are in the news now.  

Dig Deeper This data shows that the youngest set of voters are slow to involve themselves in politics and they are less interested in issues than their older voting counterparts. Write your own set of poll questions and ask other students at your school how much they pay attention to politics. Take your data and make visuals of what you learn. Share your results and talk about it with your classmates.