For young people preparing to vote in their first presidential election, the 2024 contest is undoubtedly shaping up to be a memorable one.

On one side: a candidate convicted of felonies who survived two apparent assassination attempts on the campaign trail. On the other: a candidate who stepped in to replace the incumbent midrace. 

Once upon a time, this might have sounded like the stuff of political fiction, but the attention-grabbing headlines in this year's election cycle may, for better or worse, be feeling more like the norm to the American people, especially for the nation's youngest voters, who came of age at a time marked by several unprecedented events in politics, says University of Arizona political scientist Frank Gonzalez. 

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Things that seasoned voters considered outrageous in 2016 don't carry the same weight with new voters. "Young voters have grown up in a world where that's just politics," said Gonzalez, an associate professor in the in the School of Government and Public Policy in the U of A College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. "Voters who are voting for the first time this election were young teens in 2020, so their first exposure to American elections was in 2020 with the candidate who lost saying the election was rigged and stolen."

It remains to be seen if and how the twists and turns of this year's presidential race will affect turnout among young voters – a demographic that presidential candidates throughout history have fought to win over but who tend to turn out in low numbers on Election Day, Gonzalez said. 

As former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris clash on several issues of critical importance to the American people – including reproductive rights, immigration and the economy – some young voters might be feeling especially motivated to cast their votes, while others may be feeling more disillusioned, he said.   

"There's a lot of disillusionment with the political process. You see it on both sides, and it's especially high among young voters," Gonzalez said. "The most active sides of each party are wanting to question the system as a whole. You have arguments on both sides that somehow the system itself is illegitimate."

On the right, for example, there were those who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, while on the left, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, there were those who questioned whether electoral politics are the best way to enact change, Gonzalez said. 

The Gen Z gender gap

Despite potential disillusionment, more than 50% of registered voters between the ages of 18 and 29 voted in the 2020 race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden – a higher number than in 2008, when Barack Obama was elected and became the first Black U.S. president, according to the U.S Elections Project. It was only the second presidential election in which some members of Generation Z – which includes those born between 1997 to 2012 – were old enough to vote.

Usually, Gonzaelz said, high turnout by young voters – who are generally more likely to lean liberal – is a good thing for Democrats, as it was in 2020. 

But young voters aren't a monolith, and there's no guarantee they will vote the Democratic ticket. Recent polls, including the Harvard Youth Poll and a recent report from the Gallup organization, suggest there are notable gender differences in young people's political leanings, with women ages 18-29 growing increasingly liberal in recent years while a growing number of young men have disassociated from the Democratic party or "liberal" label. The Harvard poll found that male and female voters under 30 are both more likely to support Harris overall, but female support outpaces male support 70% to 53%. 

The reason for the gender gap hasn't been fully explained, but Gonzalez suspects it's connected to a growing preference among young males – in the years since Trump entered the political sphere – for more authoritarian qualities, such as "strength" and "power," in a presidential candidate. 

"Authoritarianism is about prioritizing strength and dominance and power and hierarchy and deference to authority," Gonzalez said. "Those things also go hand in hand with hyper-masculinity, and a preference for strength and dominance is one of strongest predictors of whether you support Donald Trump." 

Will Swifties have sway? 

Another surprise in this year's election cycle could be the new power of celebrity endorsements. Generally, political scientists have found that such endorsements have little measurable impact on a race, Gonzalez said. 

But that could be changing, particularly among younger people. In the 24 hours after singer-songwriter Taylor Swift threw her support behind Harris and urged her fans to register to vote, 405,999 people visited the website vote.gov, a voting information site run by the U.S. General Services Administration in collaboration with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The site typically has about 30,000 visitors a day. 

"In political science, the go-to explanation has been that endorsements don't matter that much," Gonzalez said. "Regardless of whether they're celebrity or union or industry, we've looked time and time again and it seems like it doesn't really shift elections. But this year seems different. We have billionaires who have an incredible amount of influence –  Taylor Swift on the left and Elon Musk on the right – so it's hard to think that this has not changed what we thought we knew about how endorsements matter."

Getting out the college vote

Adriana Grijalva, University of Arizona student body president and a junior majoring in political science, will be voting in her first presidential election this year.

She believes the unprecedented nature of this year's race has motivated her peers to vote. 

"I've never seen an election like this, and I've never seen this much engagement, especially from young voters," she said. "Students get that their vote matters, and that it matters more than ever to be inspired to vote." 

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As president of the Associated Students of the University of Arizona, Grijalva has made it her mission to get her fellow students registered to vote and to the polls on Election Day.

She chairs the university's Nonpartisan Civic Engagement Committee, which launched the Wildcats Take Action: Your Voice, Your Impact campaign to encourage voter registration and participation among students.

The campaign is reaching out to students through social media, direct messaging, information tables on the U of A Mall and special events, including a series of workshops intended to educate young voters about how to register, where to vote and what's on the ballot. The deadline to register to vote in Arizona is Oct. 7.

"The inspiration for creating the Nonpartisan Civic Engagement Committee on campus came from a desire to support students through this election season, so they feel informed and have the resources and are empowered by participating in voting," said Grijalva, who is 20. 

Grijalva hopes to run for Congress when she turns 25, following in the footsteps of her uncle Raul Grijalva, a Democrat who since 2003 has represented Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives.

For now, her goal is to increase the percentage of U of A students voting in the presidential election. In the 2020 election, 60.5% of U of A students voted, according to the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement, a study of college and university student voting conducted by Tufts University. Grijalva would like to see that number top 63% this year and 70% in the future. 

The U of A will host early voting in the Student Union Memorial Center's Santa Cruz room on Oct. 28-31 from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. and Nov. 1 from 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Additional information is available on the ASUA Bear Down & Vote page.