Polls show that young voters are most concerned with the cost of living, jobs, gun violence, and climate change, and many have also expressed unhappiness about the war in Gaza. Some have spoken out about planning not to vote this year because they feel that government doesn’t address their needs and concerns.
Every set of young voters is different from election to election, explains John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School.
“This generation seems to be voicing concern over Gaza and also voicing concern about why all of this matters, why voting” matters, he says.
Gen Z’s frustrations may have something to do with the way young people today see the world, experts note.
“[Political] parties are institutions, and Gen Z-ers aren’t really into institutions,” says Morley Winograd, senior fellow at the Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy at the University of Southern California.
In New York Times interviews earlier this year with nearly two dozen voters under the age of 30, some described the country’s political climate as “scary,” “disheartening,” “not in a good place,” and “pretty depressing.”
Biden’s departure from the presidential race this summer and Vice President Kamala Harris’s nomination energized some voters. Within two days of Biden’s announcement, Vote.org saw 38,500 new voter registrations, most of whom were 34 and under—a 700 percent spike. Taylor Swift’s September endorsement of Harris sent hundreds of thousands of people to registration sites.