Five things we learned at the 2025 National Student Vote Summit
As the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition celebrates its 10-year anniversary, major questions loom for Year 11.
On November 12-14, 325 students, nonprofit staff, campus staff, administrators, faculty members, and public officials from 36 states and the District of Columbia gathered at the University of Maryland for the Students Learn Students Vote (SLSV) Coalition’s 10th annual National Student Vote Summit (NSVS).
As always, NSVS provided a useful snapshot of the national movement for 100% student voter participation as participants looked back on the 2025 state and local election cycle and looked ahead to the 2026 midterms. But unlike the previous nine Summits, this gathering also offered an occasion to celebrate and reflect on an important milestone in the lifespan of the SLSV Coalition and the nonpartisan student vote movement.
In other words, it was a once-in-a-decade convergence of our movement’s past, present, and future. Here are five key lessons it taught us:
1. In a difficult voting environment, progress doesn’t necessarily equate to linear growth.
In her keynote address during NSVS 2025’s opening night reception, Leela Strong, the Newhouse Director of Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), announced topline findings from the forthcoming National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) for the 2024 election cycle.
The study found that 76% of eligible college students registered to vote in the 2024 presidential election, with 53% casting a ballot. Both figures represent a decrease compared to 2020, when 83% of eligible students registered and 66% voted, but equaled and slightly increased over 2016, which saw a 76% registration rate and a 52% voting rate.
However, as Strong outlined in her address, the 2024 voting and registration rates were achieved despite significant headwinds against student voter participation, including a rash of recent laws that made made voting more difficult for college students, a national political environment that has left millions of young voters feeling politically homeless, and the fact that only 16% of young people think democracy is working for them.
Strong argued that taking this broader context into account, NSLVE 2024’s topline findings showed an impressive continuation of progress by the movement for 100% student voter participation. “If only 16% of young people think democracy is working for them, but more than 50% of college students voted in 2024, that means you are breaking through that disillusionment for millions of students,” Strong told attendees of the NSVS opening reception. “That is a testament to your hard work, your determination, and your impressive ability to meet students where they are.”
With surging youth turnout in 2025 statewide and local elections, evidence points toward a shift in momentum in favor of youth and student voter turnout in future elections, potentially facilitating a continued growth trajectory for student turnout and registration rates.
2. Student voter engagement has to account for students’ basic needs.
Strong’s keynote address also presented compelling evidence that our country’s youngest generation of voters is struggling in ways that go far beyond finding a political home. It’s struggling to find community, make connections, and meet basic needs.
According to CIRCLE, half of all young people either rarely or never spend time with other members of their community, including 40% of all students. This tracks with first-hand experiences of SLSV Coalition team members, who throughout 2025 have received significant anecdotal feedback speaking to the need for shared spaces and community within the nonpartisan student vote movement - sentiments that were backed up with high attendance at SLSV Coalition meetings and by feedback from NSVS 2025 attendees. More broadly, the absence and growing need for community among students may point toward community-building as a successful nonpartisan voter engagement strategy at the campus community level, encouraging strategies that focus on building welcoming third spaces and inclusive social circles in addition to mobilizing for specific, election-focused actions.
The same research by CIRCLE also stated that 43% of young people say they sometimes or often have trouble making ends meet financially. If successful nonpartisan student voter engagement requires meeting students where they are, reckoning with this harsh reality is necessary, and will require a deeper look at what successfully serving student voters looks like when, for millions of students, engaging with democracy falls behind much more dire and immediate priorities.
NSVS 2025 portended a deepening collaboration between the movement for 100% student voter participation and groups that seek to help ensure students have secure housing, food, and finances, including the Student Basic Needs Coalition (SBNC), a national nonprofit dedicated to combating the ongoing student basic needs crisis. During NSVS’ final breakout sessions on November 14, SBNC members August Maulfair, Madaline Allen, and Owen Tanner-Flomberg hosted a discussion exploring how connecting basic needs support to nonpartisan student voter engagement can strengthen both student retention and democratic participation.
3. Many college presidents believe higher education’s role in shaping our democracy is worth protecting.
The morning of NSVS 2025’s first full day of programming began with a panel discussion featuring three community college presidents - Dr. Michael Gavin of Delta College (MI), Dr. Jermaine F. Williams of Montgomery College (MD), and Dr. Yves Salomon-Fernández of the Urban College of Boston - that brought into focus how the realities of a turbulent and rapidly-changing higher education ecosystem manifest in campus communities and in the lives of the individuals tasked with leading them.
At a time when the role and compatibility of nonpartisan student voter engagement within a broader higher education mission is under scrutiny by both federal and state-level actors, Gavin, Williams, and Salomon-Fernández each delivered forceful arguments for the inextricability of robust civic engagement as part of a healthy campus culture, as well as a key element of higher education’s broader mission to expand access to economic mobility and civic life for all Americans.
While far from every college president shares the panelists’ views or commitment to full student voter participation, the unequivocally supportive and encouraging language from all three speakers served as an important springboard for the remainder of the Summit, demonstrating the reach of, and support for, the movement for 100% student voter participation in American higher ed.
4. The ultimate goal is still 100% student voter participation. The current environment is changing how student vote leaders plan on getting there.
For many NSVS 2025 attendees and student vote advocates throughout the country, an increasingly fraught and restrictive environment for outreach that targets racial and ethnic minorities and other marginalized communities has necessitated a shift in nonpartisan strategies aimed at reaching every student. As Inside Higher Ed reported in their coverage of the Summit, this environment is causing “trepidation” among student voters and those who aim to reach them.
Much of NSVS 2025’s programming, including a breakout discussion of the strategies outlined in the SLSV Coalition’s Reaching Students Where They Are Guide and a presentation to the full Summit by North American Association of Indian Students Executive Director Sudhanshu Kaushik on Cultural Microtargeting, aimed to help student vote leaders navigate new restrictions while finding other nonpartisan ways to ensure that no eligible student’s identity or circumstances prevent them from accessing the vote.
5. A decade later, the nonpartisan student vote movement is still “experimenting.”
On the evening of November 13, NSVS attendees were joined by dozens of past and present SLSV Coalition partners who helped shape the Coalition’s first decade. Their work enabled what SLSV Coalition Co-Founder and Executive Director Clarissa Unger described as “an experiment in collaboration” to blossom into a formidable nationwide movement.
Today the SLSV Coalition has a presence in all 50 states and has powered the collaborations that led to 1,962 college campuses hosting nonpartisan voter mobilization events for Campus Takeover of the Civic Holidays, 843 campuses writing nonpartisan student voter engagement action plans, and 397 campuses participating in the Ask Every Student Initiative.
Just as significant, according to Unger, is the SLSV Coalition’s continued and robust culture of collaboration, experimentation, and accountability. “We believed that if we built this [Coalition] together, it would last beyond any one election year, team, or generation,” Unger said during the 10-year anniversary celebration. “A decade later, we know that belief was right. The systems, relationships, and shared language we’ve built have changed what is possible for college student voting. But this story is far from finished.”