CIRCLE Director Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg comments on young people's political power, which extends beyond voting to holding elected leaders accountable on issues they care about.

Gen Z’s actions indicate “that they really want to have a role and say in making change in their communities and in this country,” said Abby Kiesa, CIRCLE’s deputy director.

This generation also appears to be more civically engaged. In a poll CIRCLE took before the 2020 election, 27 percent of young people aged 18 to 24 said they had attended a march or protest, up from 5 percent in pre-election 2016.

CIRCLE reported this month that even though people ages 18 to 29 who can vote tend to identify less with political parties than other age brackets, young adults who do select a party tend to affiliate with Democrats.

According to Abby Kiesa, deputy director of CIRCLE, a major factor in the increase has been the work of organizations that arose after 2014 to try to improve campus voting rates.

CIRCLE Director Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg says it really matters for people to hear their peers advocating for voting. “Young people who think their peers are voting are far more likely to think they’ll also vote.”

CIRCLE's postdoctoral researcher Sara Suzuki talks about the role of climate activism, its importance to young people as an issue, and its potential impact on the 2022 midterm elections.

A recent report from CIRCLE detailed that nearly half of states already have more young people 18 to 24 registered to vote than they did in November 2018.

CIRCLE data on the 2020 youth vote in Georgia informs this podcast about the power and influence of young Black voters in recent elections and on the 2022 midterms.

Tufts’ Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement recently cited data that concludes that states with facilitative election laws clearly have higher youth voter participation rates

The young and civically-engaged need to be actively encouraged or financially supported to run for office, beginning at the local level, says CIRCLE fellow Sara Suzuki.

In surveys around the 2020 election, CIRCLE, a civic research shop at Tufts University, found that 13% of people ages 18 to 29 marked climate change as their top concern, the most of any issue.