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College students in Fort Dodge, Iowa, wait to take photographs with Joe Biden two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, where Biden came in fourth place behind Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Al Drago/Getty Images
WASHINGTON — For many young Democrats, President-elect Joe Biden wasn’t their top choice in the party’s 2020 primaries. They helped send him to the White House anyway.
Voters under 30 sided with the more liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont over Biden in the primaries, and in some early contests they made up a smaller share of the electorate than in 2016.
But in the November election, turnout among people between 18 and 29 years old rose compared with 2016, voting data show, as President Trump’s bid for re-election helped spur record voting among Republicans and Democrats across most demographic groups.
Young voters backed Biden over Trump by 61% to 36%, according to AP VoteCast, a large survey of 2020 voters.
College towns, in particular, appear to have been key to Biden’s success in top battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Despite challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic, the Democrat improved on his party’s 2016 performance in counties across the country that are home to big universities, a Wall Street Journal analysis found.
An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.
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