Generation Z, often abbreviated to Gen Z, makes up the majority of the young voting demographic and have been regarded as one of the most politically active generations, but this is not reflected at the polls when analyzing young voter turnout statistics.
“Younger voters have particularly taken up charges of justice and are interested in issues of justice in ways that perhaps other generations have not been interested in for a couple of decades or more,” said Dr. Chris Grant, the chair of the Political Science Department at Mercer University.
With the 2024 Presidential Election over and former President Donald Trump being declared the President Elect, one group has emerged as a critical driving force of many political campaigns: young voters.
Since the Millennial generation is now designated as the largest voting bloc, many campaigns have turned their attention toward young people between the ages of 18 and 30 in order to capture the “youth vote.” However, it is no secret that young voter turnout tends to be lower on average than other age groups.
This begs the question: what is holding young voters back from the polls?
Challenges and Barriers
According to Grant, one of the biggest barriers for young voters is the complexities of registration.
“It is about being registered in one address and knowing where to vote from that address and how to go about it,” he said in an interview prior to the 2024 election.
Since a portion of the young voter demographic are college students or those just starting out, voting can be perhaps more complicated than for other age demographics since they do not necessarily have a stable address.
“We know the voter registration has a negative effect on people who move frequently, and the younger you are, the more likely they are to move because you don’t buy a house until you’re older,” Grant said.
Students must also take into consideration the fact that Election Day is not a national holiday in the United States, meaning that students are not guaranteed a “day off” of school and thus must find time to vote between classes. This can be further complicated by the fact that most students attend a college outside of their home county, meaning they must either travel home to vote, change their voting registration if they are able to, or request an absentee ballot.
Absentee ballots tend to be popular amongst college-aged voters, but with the regulations and limitations placed on them– such as some states requiring a reason for requesting an absentee ballot or having to ensure the ballot makes it back in time for the election– the process can be complicated.
Gray Law, a junior at Mercer University, said one of the challenges was not knowing when to expect the ballot.
“My main issue was not knowing when I’d get it. I faced this issue in 2022 when my roommate tried voting, and it caused us to drive to a voting center since there was no way to get the ballot mailed off before the cutoff date,” Law said. “I requested my ballot at the same time as my current roommate, but mine came much later than his did.”
The Power of Social Media
With most young voters having grown up in the era of the internet and social media, political campaigns often use social media to target these age groups and encourage them to vote. Many wonder how effective this strategy was, or what impact social media has had on informing younger voters.
“I am not as convinced that social media necessarily is the best curator of information for younger voters, older voters, or anyone,” Grant said. “There’s a lot of things that I increasingly see that are half-truths, falsehoods, not complete truths, and so we wind up with a lot of issues with being able to get verifiable, reliable information through the sources that come at us from so many different directions, which has had the effect of reducing the value of quality news as well, because a lot of us don’t have the ability to differentiate between good sources and bad sources, because they all kind of look the same.”
Distrust in the media and misinformation floating around on the internet has been a cause of concern for a number of years, Grant said.
Grant says the “lies of political candidates” has been “a real quandary for political scientists in recent years.”
“Because, yes, Democratic candidates are not superior with truth to Republican candidates, and Republican candidates certainly tell truth a lot of times,” he said. “Democratic candidates have been known to manipulate factors, but in this particular election cycle, and the two previous running for president, we’ve had one candidate that has continued to just mislead and misinform and tell mistruths.”
Looking Ahead
An important aspect of the youth vote is that America is becoming more diverse, and Gen Z is regarded as one of the most racially and ethnically diverse generations in the United States.
“Younger voters have particularly taken up charges of justice and are interested in issues of justice in ways that perhaps other generations have not been interested in for a couple of decades more," Grant said.
Grant also speculated that one of the factors influencing youth voters is the authenticity of the political candidates.
“I but I also think there's something else that that younger voters have demanded-- and maybe they see it, and maybe they don't,” Grant said. “And this is one of the things that I think hurt some candidates that have not been able to capture the imagination of that group--and that is younger voters have looked for something that comes off as authentic to them, that this is genuine, this is true.”
