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By Trend

CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement, a non-partisan, independent research organization focused on youth civic engagement in the United States. estimates that 27 percent of youth (ages 18-29) cast a ballot in 2022, making this the midterm election with the second-highest youth voter turnout in almost three decades.

James Gao, a student of Duke University told Trend that young people don’t feel enough motivation to go voting.

“I think it's just harder for people to realize what's happening. They see the signs on the side of the street for the candidates, but they don't really know who the candidates are or what they stand for. Unlike the presidential elections, where there's so much coverage of who's running, it might be hard for you to realize that you know, someone is running in your state or in your local area. And when most people who don't pay attention to politics that closely, don't really recognize what's happening, then they don't feel a strong motivation to go out and vote or to volunteer. What we're seeing is that whether it's on Tik Tok or Snapchat, or traditional forms of media, it's easier than before, to kind of get access to the type of political information, you might need to make an informed vote. But I think the issue is really making sure that people connect with politics, and they understand exactly what the implications are for their lives and for their communities. And I think that both politicians and media still need to do a little bit of work explaining that to young voters,” he said.

Gao believes that if young people would be more active in this elections, the Democratic Party would be in a lot stronger position than it is right now.

“I don't know the specific numbers. But I'm pretty sure that young voters break very heavily for the Democrats and for liberal causes. And what we've seen over the past two years is that the Democratic Party is more diverse. It has a bigger coalition of people from a wide range of different identities and backgrounds. And I think that the Republican Party represents predominantly white, predominantly Christian, kind of way of American life that is fading. And that is one that young people don't necessarily, you know, identify with, because they're more diverse,” said the student.

He said he is absolutely not satisfied with the young people representation in the power.

“I think that there's still a long way to go. One of my friends mentioned that we have the first generation Z member of Congress, who was elected yesterday. And that's obviously a great start. But again, we don't turn out to vote enough for the size of our demographic within America. And that means that we need to continue nominating candidates, we need to continue advocating and mobilizing and organizing around candidates to make sure that we're getting further than just, you know, one person at a time because if we all turned out to vote, we could have a really formidable voice both on the national and the local level. And I don't think we're there yet,” added Gao.

Another student Jaquell Sneed said there is wisdom that comes with being in office for a certain amount of time.

“It is great that we have some folks who are a bit on the older side and have been in the in politics and in leadership for quite a bit of time. However, it's much too skewed, we don't have enough new voices, we don't have enough representation across generations.

We have a population that is younger, it's continuing to get younger. And so if we are not matching that with representation in government, we are putting ourselves at a disadvantage of not truly representing the public that we claim to represent. So I definitely think it's a huge issue. There aren't enough pipeline programs to get younger folks engaged. Just because someone is younger does not mean they're representing the values and ideologies of their peers. And so I think that if we were engaging people early on making sure that people are informed earlier on and have the opportunities to step into leadership locally, regionally, then we would have a better opportunity to actually recruit in and promote into leadership millennials, and even some Gen Z so that we have more representation,” she added.

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