When the election occurs this November, it is certain that fewer young men in Washington will be registered to vote than young women. Based on recent voter participation data, it’s also predictable that a lower percentage of young men who are registered to vote will cast a ballot. What remains to be seen is precisely how large these gender gaps will be.
We expect that the share of Washington men ages 18 to 34 who vote in the November 2024 election will be between 5 and 10 percentage points lower than the share of women the same age who vote. That amounts to around 50,000 fewer votes.
A healthy democracy functions best with broad engagement that reflects the population being represented. Washington Initiative for Boys and Men finds it both interesting and concerning that there is a substantial deficit in voter turnout among young men.
What does voter turnout data show?
The Office of the Secretary of State maintains a massive spreadsheet of voter participation data with numbers disaggregated by county, age grouping, and sex for elections going back to the year 2000. (The spreadsheet is downloadable here.)
The best measures in the spreadsheet for illustrating sex-based disparities when it comes to voting behavior are the female population turnout and male population turnout numbers. Those numbers tell what percentage of the total female and male populations who are of voting age actually voted in each election. They are slightly better measures than female voter turnout and male voter turnout because they account for the fact that not only are young men who are registered to vote less likely to actually turn in a ballot, but young men are also less likely than young women to be registered in the first place.
With this year’s election being a presidential election, we narrowed our analysis of the voter participation data to presidential-year elections: 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. (The Office of the Secretary of State’s spreadsheet contains voting data disaggregated by sex beginning in 2005, so the 2008 election is the earliest available.)
Differences in population turnout rates
For whatever reason, the Secretary of State’s dataset only has female population turnout and male population turnout numbers for the elections of 2008 and 2020; they aren’t currently available for 2012 and 2016. The spreadsheet does, though, have female voter turnout and male voter turnout numbers for the four most recent presidential-year elections, and we will look at those numbers later.
Starting with population turnout rates, in the 2008 general election 26.6% of men in Washington ages 18 to 24 voted, which was 8.2 percentage points lower than women of the same age at 34.8%. For the 2020 election the deficit was slightly larger at 9.5 percentage points, with 43.4% of males ages 18 to 24 voting and 52.9% of females voting.
“Women have registered and voted at higher rates than men in every presidential election since 1980, with the turnout gap between women and men growing slightly larger with each successive presidential election…The gender gap tends to be particularly large among voters ages 18-44.”
– Center for American Women and Politics, Rutgers University
After ages 18 to 24, the next oldest age cohort provided in the dataset is ages 25 to 34. For that cohort, the difference in population turnout between men and women in the 2008 election was 10.2 percentage points. In 2020 the difference was 7.7 percentage points.
These disparities in population turnout are not insignificant.
Population Turnout by Sex, Ages 18-24
| Election Year | Female Population Turnout (WA, Ages 18-24) | Male Population Turnout (WA, Ages 18-24) | Male Deficit |
| 2020 | 52.9% | 43.4% | 9.5% |
| 2008 | 34.8% | 26.6% | 8.2% |
Population Turnout by Sex, Ages 25-34
| Election Year | Female Population Turnout (WA, Ages 25-34) | Male Population Turnout (WA, Ages 25-34) | Male Deficit |
| 2020 | 58.5% | 50.8% | 7.7% |
| 2008 | 48.4% | 38.2% | 10.2% |
Differences in voter turnout rates
In the Secretary of State’s voter participation dataset, voter turnout rates tell what percentage of a given population of registered voters actually voted. The dataset has voter turnout percentages disaggregated by sex for the elections of 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020.
During those four elections, Washington’s men ages 18 to 24 who were registered to vote turned in their ballots at percentages that were between 4.8 and 7.1 percentage points lower than their female peers. Among men ages 25 to 34, they voted at percentages that were between 3.9 and 5.1 percentage points lower than their female peers.
In terms of the raw number of ballots, these disparities in voter turnout amount to around 50,000 fewer votes cast each election by men in Washington ages 18 to 34 compared to women in the same age group.
‘Could signal potential danger’
A recent commentary from the Brookings Institution by Elaine Kamarck and Jordan Muchnick speaks to the importance of this topic.
Firstly, the writers acknowledge: “Young men have repeatedly been found in recent years to be apathetic towards voting, with young women in recent election cycles constantly turning out to vote at higher rates than young men.”
Then they speak to why this matters: “From a societal perspective, it could signal potential danger if young men feel less tied to democracy and feel no need to participate in the democratic process while increasingly becoming disheartened with their social status. The incentive for change and action may be there, but not through democratic means.”
Washington Initiative for Boys and Men wishes to raise awareness about the young male voting deficit, and we want to pose the idea that perhaps male-focused voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts are warranted.
Civic engagement is fundamental to the shaping of laws, policies, and public services in a way that best serves the people. We should aspire to elections in which one’s sex or gender is not predictive of one’s likelihood to vote.
Are fewer votes by young men balanced out by more votes by older men?
Some may wonder whether the gender gap in voter turnout flips among older voters, and whether that balances things out on the whole. The answer is not really.
The oldest age group in the Secretary of State’s dataset (age 65+) was the only age group where registered men voted at higher rates than registered women in the 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 elections. The differences ranged from 0.4% percentage points to 1.6% percentage points. However, with far more women than men living beyond age 65, the significantly larger population of older women outweighed their slight voter turnout deficit. For example, in the 2016 election men ages 65 and above voted at a rate that was one percentage point higher than women ages 65 and above, but there were still 57,966 more women than men in that age group who cast a ballot.
When looking at voter turnout among men and women of any age in the last four presidential-year elections, the male voter turnout deficits have ranged from 1.9% to 2.7%. In terms of the number of overall votes cast, the male deficits have ranged from 188,895 votes to 204,517 votes.
Population Turnout by Sex, All Ages
| Election Year | Female Voter Turnout (WA, all ages) | Male Voter Turnout (WA, all ages) | Male Voter Turnout Deficit | Male Votes Deficit |
| 2008 | 82.5% | 80.6% | 1.9% | 204,517 |
| 2012 | 81.8% | 79.9% | 1.9% | 188,895 |
| 2016 | 79.7% | 77.0% | 2.7% | 199,772 |
| 2020 | 85.3% | 82.% | 2.6% | 192,224 |
We may do a subsequent article showing which counties in Washington had the largest and smallest gender gaps in terms of voter registration, population turnout, and voter turnout.
See also: 7 Democrats, 7 Republicans Sponsor 2024 Commission on Boys and Men Legislation