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Written by Grayson Wormser

Here are five insights you won’t want to miss this month:

1. How Prepared Are Americans to Vote?

What You Need to Know: As we head into the final three weeks of the election, we wanted to look at how prepared Americans are to vote. The bottom line: young voters, especially Gen Z, fall below all other generations on most questions related to vote readiness. Across the 7 steps we looked at in a recent survey to measure voter readiness, Gen Z scored the lowest on 6 out of the 7 items. Specifically, Gen Z is significantly less likely (51%) than the average voter to know their polling place location. Perhaps not surprisingly, Boomers scored the highest on all items. This data supports the need for continued engagement efforts targeting younger individuals, like National Voter Education Week, to engage voters with fewer years of election experience.

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2. Looking Closer at How Generations Value Democracy

What You Need to Know:  Only 62% of Gen Z voters say they believe living in a democracy is important, compared to nearly 90% of Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers. While this number is increasing among Gen Z, they still fall behind older generations. This trend aligns with other concerning patterns we’ve observed, such as Gen Z’s greater acceptance of political violence compared to older Americans. Check out our latest blog post that takes a closer look at the attitudes of this influential voting bloc.

More Gen Z Trends

3. A Closer Look at Project 2025

What You Need to Know: At this point, you’ve likely heard a lot about Project 2025. It received quite a bit of attention during both the presidential and vice-presidential debates. But where do voters stand on these policies as we head into the final month of the election? While awareness has significantly increased (53% since May ’24), roughly 2 in 3 voters have remained opposed to the policy agenda. Interestingly, when we break this down by generation, Gen Z is the most likely to reject Project 2025’s policies, perhaps due to the increase in attention it has received on social media platforms like TikTok where a growing number of Gen Z gets their news.

Read More on Project 2025

4. The Most Up-to-Date Picture on Election Trust

What You Need to Know: With the election less than a month away, many are concerned about whether Americans will accept the results of the 2024 election and what actions they might take if the results don’t go their way. A closer look at election trust over the past five months reveals fluctuating levels of trust, although trends generally point upward. Between May and September 2024, between 65% and 75% of Americans express some degree of trust in the 2024 election results. Our latest data from September 2024 shows that 72% of voters, on average, will trust the result of the election, with less variance across generations than we’ve seen in a while.

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5. Are Celebrity Endorsements Influential?

What You Need to Know: As the media spends time commentating on the political endorsements of famous celebrities, like Taylor Swift and Elon Musk, we wanted to understand the extent to which voters are impacted by these endorsements. Perhaps surprisingly, 61% of the electorate finds celebrity endorsements unimportant to their vote choice. Furthermore, over 6 in 10 Americans distrust celebrities as a source of political information. While celebrities can impact voter registration and overall civic engagement, this data suggests their endorsements might not have as much influence as we assume.

More Insights

Data in Action

Interested in getting your questions answered in our monthly omnibus survey? Learn more here and reach out to Grayson Wormser ([email protected]).

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