Republicans will need to find a way to circumvent their weaknesses with Generation Z voters heading into the 2024 elections.
Gen Z voters lean toward the Democratic Party for its stances on abortion, gun control, climate change, and LGBT rights — all areas that Republicans tend to shy away from. Because of this, the GOP is facing a voter deficit among young voters.
MAXWELL FROST BECOMES FIRST MEMBER OF GEN Z ELECTED TO CONGRESS
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) was elected to the House in the 2022 midterm elections. He's the first of Gen Z to be elected to national office, marking a change in the political arena as young voters become more active and vocal in national politics.
A Pew Research Center poll from December showed that 77% of Gen Z voters voted for a Democratic candidate for Congress, while 21% voted Republican.
This change in behavior motivated Frost and former GOP congressional candidate Karoline Leavitt to run for office. Leavitt challenged and lost to incumbent Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) in New Hampshire's 1st Congressional District.
Leavitt told to the Hill that the low support from Gen Z voters is a "colossal" challenge.
"That’s part of the reason why I decided to run for office,” Leavitt said.
Frost faced fewer roadblocks and won handily in Florida's predominantly blue district. As a gun violence survivor, Frost made gun control a focal point of his campaign — it's a topic that polls show resonates strongly with Gen Z voters.
A March poll from the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School showed that 63% of voters ages 18-29 believe gun laws in the United States should be stricter.
"It doesn't matter [whether you] live in a big city or small town, whether you're a college student or not — young Americans are demanding stricter gun laws as they see millions of their friends living in fear and wondering whether they or someone they love will be the next victim,” Institute of Politics Polling Director John Della Volpe said in a statement.
The recent poll came out a day after the Nashville shooting that claimed three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members' lives at the Covenant School.
“From Parkland to Uvalde to the shooting yesterday in Nashville, young Americans have consistently demanded stricter gun laws,” said Ethan Jasny, student chairman of the Harvard Public Opinion Project. “Even when mass shootings aren’t in the news, the threat of gun violence hangs over my generation, provoking anxiety for those who are already suffering most from the mental health crisis.”
Alongside gun control, abortion is high on Gen Z's list. Della Volpe told the Hill that the GOP's problems with connecting to young voters stem from how vastly different the generations' values are.
“Republicans don’t have a messaging problem with younger voters. They have a values problem with younger voters,” Della Volpe said. “The problem is their values and vision are misaligned and the messengers are not trustworthy currently.”
“Democrats have been winning somewhere between 60-75% of the youth vote,” Della Volpe added. “It’s not because of some undying love or connection to the Democratic Party. It’s because the values of the Democratic Party today are more aligned with the values of younger people today, so they choose Democrats over Republicans.”
However, Republican Gen Z voters believe the solution is to change their messaging instead of their values.
“We don’t need to sacrifice our conservative values to cater to this demographic," Leavitt said. "What we need to do is hone in on our messaging and be better messengers of these values and beliefs."
She said Republican lawmakers and candidates need to amplify their message on certain topics, such as gun violence and abortion, to offer an alternative to the Democratic Party's solutions.
“Young people in America, many of them, the majority of them in my opinion, have not even ever heard of what the conservative solutions are to shootings, to violence in our country,” she said.
Some older Republicans already see the lack and are taking steps to address it. Following the 2022 midterm elections, in which Democrats overwhelmingly swept the board among Gen Z voters, the Republican National Committee announced it was forming the Youth Advisory Council to engage and reach young voters.
Some young Republicans believe social media could help reach the younger demographic.
“[There’s] more than room for improvement. There’s room to really start winning Gen Z,” Turning Point USA contributor Isabel Brown said. "You can’t win over culture if you’re not willing to go where culture is, and the vast, vast majority of our generation is obtaining our news, our opinion commentary, and just all our information dissemination through our social media feeds."
Leavitt echoed Brown. She pointed to Democrats' presence on social media and digital marketing.
“That’s an instrumental problem that the GOP needs to get on board with," she said. "We have to meet these voters where they are or else we’re never going to persuade them into believing in our policies and our conservative solutions."
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Brown added that Republicans may be weakened by the growing lack of empathy in political discourse, especially around hot-button areas.
“When we talk about issues like gun control, school safety, and mass shootings, that’s an incredibly empathy-driven conversation that needs to lead with the heart first rather than jumping to speak on policy on both sides of the issue,” Brown said. “We often say as conservatives that facts don’t care about your feelings, and I think that has been a really successful tag line in years and decades past, but Generation Z is a feelings-oriented generation.”