Why Some Students Say They Don’t Plan to Vote

Only a handful of college students—8 percent of those surveyed by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab in late September—say that they are not planning to vote in the 2024 presidential election.  It’s certainly an extreme underestimation of how many students will actually forgo casting a ballot this year; college student voter turnout in 2020 was 66 percent, a record. But of those who have made the choice not to vote this year, the majority indicated that that decision was tied to distrust and dislike of American politics and the politicians on the ballot this year.