Celinda Lake and Mac Heller have written a hopeful analysis of the 2024 electorate. The voters of 2024 are different from the voters of 2020 or any other year. To read their article in full, open the link.

They write:

It’s easy to envision the 2024 presidential election becoming the third straight contest in which a veteran Democrat goes up against Donald Trump. Once again, the Democrat wins the popular vote but swing states are tighter. Could go either way — and has, right?

But things are very different this time, and here’s why: The candidates might not be changing — but the electorate has.

Every year, about 4 million Americans turn 18 and gain the right to vote. In the eight years between the 2016 and 2024 elections, that’s 32 million new eligible voters.

Also every year, 2½ million older Americans die. So in the same eight years, that’s as many as 20 million fewer older voters.

Which means that between Trump’s election in 2016 and the 2024 election, the number of Gen Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2010s) voters will have advanced by a net 52 million against older people. That’s about 20 percent of the total 2020 eligible electorate of 258 million Americans.

And unlike previous generations, Gen Z votes. Comparing the four federal elections since 2015 (when the first members of Gen Z turned 18) with the preceding nine (1998 to 2014), average turnout by young voters (defined here as voters under 30) in the Trump and post-Trump years has been 25 percent higher than that of older generations at the same age before Trump — 8 percent higher in presidential years and a whopping 46 percent higher in midterms.

Similarly, though not as drastic, we have seen a 7 percent increase in voter registration among under-30 voters since Gen Z joined the electorate. In midterm elections, under-30s have seen a 20 percent increase in their share of the electorate, on average, since Trump and Gen Z entered the game.

Yet Trump is not the deciding factor for these voters. When pollsters ask why, Gen Z voters say their motivation is not a party or candidate. It is, instead, strong passion on one or more issues — a much more policy-driven approach than the more partisan voting behavior of their elders.

Celinda Lake, a Democratic Party strategist, was one of two lead pollsters for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. Mac Heller is a documentary film producer, most recently of “Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook.”