Will Gen Z show up to vote?

PHOENIX — In the waning days of the 2024 election, the Democratic Party sent Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost, the first Gen Z member of Congress, to visit Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and Arizona State University in Tempe. Accompanied by California Rep. Robert Garcia, Frost attempted to energize voters for the Harris-Walz ticket.
The Trump campaign is also courting younger voters with the help of an outside group, Turning Point Action, which is leading voter turnout across swing states. On Thursday, Turning Point will host a town hall on the High Point University campus in North Carolina, with vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance as the special guest.
Although Gen Z, people born between 1997 and 2012, makes up about 20% of the U.S. population, “low rates of youth voter turnout are the norm,” as John Holbein, University of Virginia professor of public policy, politics and education, said in a recent interview. He is the author of the 2020 book “Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action.” In 2016, only 43% of young Americans cast their ballots.
Surveys show younger voters are most concerned about inflation and the economy, and other issues like abortion, the Israel-Hamas war, climate change and gun reform policy.
Turning Point USA cofounder Charlie Kirk, who will join Vance, said in a press release, “As someone who spends a great deal of time with Gen Z, I can tell you with authority, their interests, questions, and anxieties are distinct from millennials, Xers, and boomers.”
“They have grown up in an America where they’re expected to downsize the American dream,” he said. Kirk said these voters were “the most drug addicted, depressed, prescribed, and anxious of any generation.”
Although they inherited “an America in decline,” they have refused “to settle for less than their parents,” he said. The inflation in recent years has delayed many major milestones for younger people, like buying a car, moving out on their own, and saving up for a down payment for a home or for retirement, as the NBC News Stay Tuned Gen Z poll found.
Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Frost, while addressing students outside the student union at NAU said Gen Z voters constantly bring up the cost of housing to him.
“They are worried what they are going to do to be a homeowner. I always love when they bring it up because I get to sympathize with them — and this is an issue, even as a 27-year-old congressman,” he said, as KAFF News radio reported. Frost said he has survived on credit cards since being sworn into office, and admitted his application to rent an apartment had also been denied because of bad credit.
Food insecurity is another common issue, “and when we look at those issues, Kamala Harris is the only one with a plan to solve them. Donald Trump’s whole plan and rhetoric is saying ‘no’ to what she’s proposing,” Frost said in a press release.