When We All Vote’s 2024: Party at the Polls

Voters Just Want to Have Fun. Literally.

By: Beth Lynk, Executive Director

Music, food, roller skating, the Wobble, and voting?

Through multiple election cycles, When We All Vote and our partners have researched ways to encourage voters to make their voices heard at the polls. One answer? Have a party.

Party at the Polls is a nonpartisan, evidence-backed program that is proven to boost turnout by up to four percentage points through early voting parties hosted at or near polling places. The program transforms voting from a solitary action into a community celebration for all, complete with music, food, and activities for people of all ages. Parties are open to everyone in the community, whether they are eligible to vote or not.

On a community college campus in Wisconsin, a party at the polls looks like partnering with MTV and the Milwaukee Bucks for a food truck festival with live DJ sets to encourage every eligible student to vote.

In Philadelphia, it means creating community block parties where voters can ride a mechanical bull, line dance, and support local vendors.

By offering a vision of voting that is accessible, inclusive, and fun, our Party at the Polls program empowers local partners to host a party in their neighborhood and increase voter turnout. The result? When We All Vote hosted more than 85,000 people at over 550 parties in 2024 and sent early voting reminders to more than 13 million voters.

Party at the Polls is effective because parties are hosted by and for the communities they’re trying to reach, featuring hometown heroes in culture, food, music, art, activism, and more. The program combines three proven tactics to encourage voters who are eligible but may have skipped previous elections to cast a ballot: making voting a social activity, leveraging trusted messengers, and encouraging people to make a plan to vote.

The size of a Party at the Polls event varies from large-scale events with more than 500 attendees and celebrity special guests to smaller, community-led events.

When We All Vote partners hosted several standout events in 2024, including Walk to the Polls in the Navajo Nation, where just 44 polling sites service 27,000 square miles of the Navajo Nation. Native voters face serious logistical challenges to voting. To meet these challenges, When We All Vote partnered with Protect the Sacred because, as activist Allie Redhorse Young said, “in order to overcome [these challenges], we have to come together as a community.” Participants in the Walk to the Polls event — including Mark Ruffalo — traveled to the ballot by foot, skateboards, and even horseback to return their ballots together as a community.

When We All Vote also invested in supporting community partners to host parties. Friends, family, and neighbors are often the best messengers when it comes to voting. Through dozens of nonpartisan events led by Divine Nine fraternity and sorority chapters, faith groups including AME churches and Muslim civic groups, and organizations like JustHarvest and 1Hood Media, RISE, local chapters of The Links, Incorporated, and Jack and Jill of America, Party at the Polls brings families and communities together to make their voices heard at the ballot box. Inviting voters to events near their early voting locations, Party at the Polls serves as another reason to put voting on the calendar, which increases a voter’s likelihood to cast a ballot.

A great party starts with the invite — and in 2024, Party at the Polls programming and outreach invited more than 13 million voters to vote early. To make this happen, we prioritized direct voter outreach to new voters under the age of 35 and voters of color of all ages in eight states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. We made sure voters heard from us through mail, peer-to-peer texting, robocalls, and a digital program that had more than 15 million impressions.

Nearly 97% of Americans over 18 live in states where they can vote before Election Day. Through Party at the Polls, we provided state-specific information about early voting, nonpartisan voter resources, and education across all forms of outreach to eligible voters. Parties were near early voting sites — during early voting hours if possible — to ensure attendees could vote before, during, or after the event. We worked closely with our party hosts to make sure they had funding and training to make an impact in their community.

As we look to local elections in 2025 and election years beyond, When We All Vote’s VoteLab will continue to analyze data about what works when it comes to getting voters to turn out and which modes of voter contact are most effective. As we continue to build and refine When We All Vote’s Party at the Polls program, we can increase voter turnout and connect to our communities in the process.