CIRCLE’s 2026 Youth Expertise Series, In Their Words, is a series of analyses and commentary from young leaders that brings their voices to the forefront. This year, we asked four young people to select from one of the following prompts:

• What affects youth civic and political engagement in your community? How can these conditions be addressed to increase youth participation? What helps young people overcome obstacles to being involved? What is effective in mobilizing young leaders?
• What kind of expertise do young people in your community have? How can organizations and advocates tap into that knowledge to better serve and improve the community?
• How can we establish or improve partnerships between young leaders and non-youth-specific organizations (like election offices or news outlets)?
• Do you see your peers struggling with their / their families’ economic situation? How does it affect their civic engagement? What can communities do to support them?
• CIRCLE shows many youth don’t like the way U.S. politics is working and want to change it. How do you see youth attitudes about democracy manifesting among your peers? What kind of messages motivate them to participate despite their concerns about democracy?
• What are some issues that don’t get a lot of national attention that youth in your community care about a lot? How can organizations tap into that civic interest and energy for youth engagement?

We received over 50 submissions, and selected four incredible writers who have taken on complex and nuanced topics such as local governance and how it affects young people, volunteerism, new models of youth-adult partnerships, and how the local economy can change the trajectories of young people’s lives and economic futures.

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Young voters are a large and powerful segment of the electorate that can have a major impact on the 2026 midterms. Close to 50 million youth, ages 18-29, are eligible to cast ballots, including more than 8 million newly eligible voters since the 2024 election. These young people can cast critical swing votes and shape electoral outcomes in races across the country.

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Learn about five key elements for organizations that want to support young people’s democratic belonging and civic engagement.

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At the same time, social structures and norms are still recalibrating in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which interrupted important periods of development for today’s youth. To understand the impact that may be having on youth civic engagement, we asked young people in our 2024 post-election survey about their in-person interactions with their community. While online communities and interactions have been important ways for young people to explore their identities, develop civically, and use their voices, online and in-person interactions don’t have equal and universally positive effects on well-being. Notably, some research suggests that in-person connections have stronger positive impacts (Kroencke et al, 2023).

This analysis furthers our understanding of young people’s in-person interactions and how they intersect with their civic behaviors and attitudes, ultimately demonstrating the urgency of supporting pathways for young people to build these connections and communities.

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In 2024, CIRCLE launched the inaugural Young Leaders Learning Community (YLLC), a yearlong program supporting 12 young people (ages 16-29) who are leading change in their communities. Through skill-building workshops, youth-led trainings, and direct funding for community projects, the YLLC created a space for young leaders to grow their civic impact, connect with one another, and inform CIRCLE’s ongoing research and practice.

Like voting and other forms of civic engagement, youth activism and leadership are shaped by structural barriers, access to resources, and support systems. Programs like the YLLC can help address these inequities by providing funding, training, and a sense of belonging, especially for young people who are often excluded from traditional pathways to leadership.

Learn more and read the full report.

CIRCLE’s recent report, How Does Gen Z Really Feel About Democracy?, published in partnership with the nonpartisan nonprofit Protect Democracy, highlighted the precarious relationship between trust in institutions and young people’s civic development. One major finding: the most civically engaged young people, who we say show a Hostile Dissatisfaction toward democracy, tend to be less trusting of institutions. This aligns with past CIRCLE research, that highlights a connection between young people who are paying attention to and engaging with institutions and a certain degree of cynicism and disillusionment. Our research also found that only 16% of 18- to 29-year-olds believe democracy is working well for young people.

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The current generation of young Americans has come of age at a time of monumental changes in how we acquire and consume information. The rise of social media and digital platforms has opened up new avenues for political information but also fractured the media landscape and supercharged concerns about misinformation. Given these shifts and challenges, the question of how and where to reach youth with the information they need to vote and participate in civic life has become a major concern.

During and after the 2024 election, there has been a lot of conversation about the role of digital platforms, podcasts, influencers, and other less traditional sources of information about voting and political issues. This new analysis, based on CIRCLE’s exclusive poll of youth (ages 18-34) conducted immediately after the 2024 election, confirms the major role that social media and digital platforms now play in young people’s political information diet. But our findings also add nuance to narratives about young people’s media consumption, and they challenge some increasingly common ideas about how to reach and engage young people.

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A major new report, produced jointly by CIRCLE and Protect Democracy, provides a nuanced examination of diverse attitudes about democracy among Gen Z, with major implications for youth civic engagement and pro-democracy efforts in the years to come.

How Does Gen Z Really Feel about Democracy? uses data from a nationally representative poll of youth conducted after the 2024 presidential election to paint a complex and worrisome picture of young people’s relationship to democracy in this moment. Our main finding is that the majority of young people (ages 18-29) support democracy in principle, but believe that the democracy they are experiencing today cannot solve the nation’s problems and is not working well for their generation.

Read the full report.

The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) Youth Electoral Significance Index (YESI) is a valuable tool for any individual, campaign, organization, or institution that is working toward one or more of those goals. The index provides data-driven rankings of the top 10 states and congressional districts where young voters have the highest potential to influence results in the next election. The YESI can help stakeholders identify places where additional efforts and resources to turn out the youth vote could be decisive; it can also be a tool for broadening engagement if efforts focus on reaching youth who have not historically participated.

Access the YESI.

CIRCLE data suggest that 52%–55% of voting-eligible young people, ages 18–29, cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential election. Check out their work to learn more about the increase in youth participation.

Please visit CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) to access recent articles highlighting CIRCLE’s research on youth political engagement.

YESI 2018: The States Where Youth Can Swing Elections

Many sectors of society must play a role in increasing youth voting and participation in democracy, and they can employ varied strategies to drive engagement. Different stakeholders will approach these efforts with diverse goals: some want to improve equity in civic participation, others to build a broad base of political power, and others still simply to win the next election.

CIRCLE’s updated Youth Electoral Significance Index (YESI) is a valuable tool for any individual, campaign, organization, or institution that seeks to increase youth political engagement. Earlier this month, we highlighted the top 10 congressional districts where young people might have an especially high electoral influence. Today we are releasing the top 10 senate and gubernatorial races where young people have the potential to do the same. The YESI can help stakeholders identify places where additional efforts and resources to turn out the youth vote could be decisive. It can also be a tool for equity and broadening engagement, if efforts focus on reaching those not yet engaged in the top-ranked locations.

Congressional: https://civicyouth.org/top-10-congressional-districts-where-youth-might-decide-the-2018-elections/

Senate and Governor: https://civicyouth.org/yesi-2018-the-states-where-youth-can-swing-senate-and-governor-races/