Because young voters may not vote for these federal elections

Young voters could oscillate the results in the next elections of Canada if they go to the polls, but it is something that demography does not traditionally do as much as their older counterparties.

Data from Canada elections It shows that during the general elections of 2021, 46.7 percent of voters aged between 18 and 24 voted. It is less than any other age group.

Those numbers decreased in the last elections. The turnout between that demography was about seven points lower in 2021 than in 2019 and more than 10 points less than in 2015.

At Carleton University in Ottawa, students who have not identified themselves completely engaged in these elections said it is because of awareness and education.

“I am not so interested in politics in general, there is a lot to do and there are so many different sides and I don’t want to be enveloped,” said Catherine O’Hall, who has recently become suitable to vote.

Her friend Jade John said that temporal restrictions prevented her from getting more information.

“It’s not something you see in front of you, so you have to go looking for it and I don’t have time to go looking for,” he said

Georgia Westwoods could have voted in the recent provincial elections of Ontario, but did not do it.

“I had no idea, I had never heard of it, I hadn’t seen anything about it,” he said, adding that his age group feels disconnected from politics.

“I don’t really know. I feel as if many people don’t do it, especially my age. I feel like many candidates do not really look towards us, I imagine. I feel like it was difficult to know where we are.”

Reach them where they are, they say young voters

In recent years, political parties they were aimed at social media To try to extract that youthful vote, but the voters with whom CBC spoke to Ottawa say that more is needed.

“We don’t look at the news, we don’t do anything of this. So we are not really aware of what is happening. If it is not on social media, we don’t know it,” said John.

And it’s not just being on social media, O’Hall said: the message must hit well.

“I have seen statements from the party leaders and things like that, but it’s not only intriguing, I guess you say. It’s not captivating, as, I don’t stop and I would look at it. I continue to flow,” he said.

Westwoods suggested taking Gen Z interns to help create a better message to reach demography.

Trying to change the numbers

The supporters of the turnout in the young generations are trying to fight that lack of awareness and argue that the decline of the youth vote does not concern apathy.

“It is a misunderstanding that young people do not want to vote,” said Amanda Munday, executive director of the new non -profit majority.

“What we discovered is that it is not that young people are not willing to vote, we see young fans and enthusiastic who really care about problems. What is happening are the obstacles to vote and access to information.”

Munday said that when the new majority speaks with the younger voters, more than half of the time, the person is not aware that an election is taking place, but in a survey on the campus conducted in the summer, only four percent of over 10,000 people voted were not willing to vote.

“The hypothesis (is) that each family has conversations on the vote and that people know what to expect, what to do, how to do it. This information is not discussed in every family,” said Munday.

The group discovered that the most critical issues for young people in these elections are economic accessibility, assistance to mental health, climate and, more recently, Canadian sovereignty. The next generation tries to explain to young people who can make a difference on these issues by voting.

“Gen Z and Millennials are the electoral majority in the next federal elections. This has been new, for the first time for generations, we have seen (Canada statistical) since 2021 that now Gen Zs and Millennials are a wider electoral majority tHan Baby Boomer“, Said a munday.

“But what we have is a demographic that does not have the same behavior patterns on many different elections to vote, so we have to take them there because we know that the decision makers in the elections can be.”