I turned eighteen last December, marking me as an adult. Sure, I couldn’t drink, smoke, or rent a car, but I excitedly began to count down to the 2022 midterm elections because I could finally do what I’d been waiting years to do: vote.  

Like myself, thousands of Gen Z voters became eligible to vote before these midterms. This year marks the seventh wave of newly inducted Gen Z votes. The oldest voters of this generation, born between 1997 and 2012, have been voting since the 2016 presidential elections. In the past three elections—2018 midterms, 2020 presidential, and 2022 midterms—we, as a generation, have decided significant and close races. 

This last midterm, Republicans and Democrats alike were expecting a massive “red-wave” or a large number of successful Republican campaigns. Contrarily, Gen Z, who votes more Democratic than any other generation, defied polling predictions and showed up in record amounts. Many Republican candidates lost their campaigns by not predicting or campaigning to the youngest voters of their constituency. Older candidates often target advertisements to older generations with cable and radio ads. Young voters never see these ads, as they are most likely to get their news, and therefore their advertisements, through social media and online streaming networks. By ignoring these platforms, Republican (and older Democratic) candidates lost potential Gen-Z votes. 

Historically, young people have been unlikely to vote, typically waiting until they’re in their middle or late ages to begin practicing their civic duty. However, Gen-Z, dubbed the “purpose generation,” has repeatedly voted in record numbers. In the 2020 presidential election, Gen-Z is credited for Biden’s win in close call states like Georgia. This election, Gen-Z voters even managed to make history by electing Maxwell Frost, age twenty-five, the first Gen-Z member of Congress. As a Democrat from Orlando, Frost will be the youngest person to join the House of Representatives next year, representing Florida’s 10th congressional district. You must be at least twenty-five years old to be elected to the House, so this year was the first opportunity for Gen-Z politicians, whose oldest members just turned twenty-five, to be elected to a national chamber. 

Frost ran his campaign on gun control and fighting gun violence. He has worked as a national organizer for March for Our Lives, an anti-gun violence organization that emerged from the survivors of the Parkland massacre. As a city that is too familiar with the devastating effects of gun violence, Orlando readily received Frost and his campaign. Frost won by a heavy margin in the deep blue district, having received 58% of the votes with only 72% of the total votes counted.  

Other Gen-Z members made their run for Congress. Republican Karoline Leavitt, age twenty-five, ran in New Hampshire’s 1st congressional district. Democrat Joe Vogel, age twenty-five, ran for a seat in Maryland’s House of Representatives. Nabeela Syed, a 23-year-old Democrat, won her election for the Illinois House of Representative’s 51st district seat. She is the first South Asian woman to serve in the Illinois legislature. 

If any lesson can be learned from the 2022 midterms for the future of politics, it is that Gen-Z does not intend to be a passive generation. Despite efforts to disenfranchise young votes, we continue to defy all predictions and precedent, and our votes have repeatedly decided elections. If candidates want to get our vote, they need to start caring about us, caring about our issues, and caring about our future. 

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