report cover featuring a pie chart of racial composition of Orange County Eligible Voters, aged 18-34, based on data from the American Community Survey in 2018
By Veronica Terriquez, Jody Agius Vallejo, and Jiayi Xu

October 2020

Orange County’s growing, racially diverse young electorate is exercising increased power at the ballot box and thus inserting its voice into local politics. To inform efforts to increase voter turnout, this report describes the young voting population aged 18-34 and highlights the roles of civic engagement groups in preparing diverse young leaders to register and mobilize their peers to vote. While featuring the ongoing work of Power California and some of Orange County’s civic engagement groups, this report also points to opportunities to grow the electorate in Orange County for the 2020 election and beyond. As such, this research demonstrates the potential to strengthen democratic participation in one of California’s most ethnically and politically diverse counties.

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Orange County’s Diverse Young Voters Exercise their Voice at the Ballot Box

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    In 2020, the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) and the USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) merged to form the USC Equity Research Institute (ERI).

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