More young people are running for public office, but winning races is an uphill battle

By Dalia Abdelwahab | Zivvy News

Nearly one in four candidates running for U.S. Congress this election cycle is a millennial or part of Gen Z, according to a new report from the nonpartisan nonprofit Future Caucus.

However, these younger candidates are losing at a higher rate than their older counterparts. Besides the incumbency advantage faced by many opponents, access to finances may be a key issue. 

In an interview with Zivvy News, Future Caucus President Layla Zaidane explained, “young people aren’t historically as connected to networks of wealth as older generations. That can matter a great deal when it comes to those primary elections when you’re really trying to differentiate yourself and persuade likely voters, especially those most-engaged voters who are going to show up at a primary, that you’re the candidate for them.”

Overall, young candidates are fed up with polarization in politics

While the Pew Research Center found that millennials and Gen Z tend to lean more progressive, especially on social issues, only 42% of young candidates this cycle identify as Democrats. Meanwhile, 29% are Republicans, and another 29% are unaffiliated. 

When comparing the two generations, Gen Z candidates are more likely to run as Independents or third-party candidates, with 38.1% opting for that route this election cycle. 

Zaidane sees this as evidence of young voters’ frustration with growing political polarization.

“When young people are elected into office, whether that’s a Millennial or a Gen Z-er, they’re actually really good at transcending polarization [and] actually building coalitions to get bipartisan legislation signed into law,” she explains. “Last year, about 25% of all state legislatures were both Gen Z and Millennials, but they were responsible for 40% of all bipartisan legislation. We see that these two generations are punching above their weight when it comes to getting things done.”

There’s significantly more young candidates than there was four years ago

For this report, Gen Z is defined as those born between 1997-2012, and Millennials are born between 1981-1996. To run for U.S. House of Representatives, you must be at least 25 years old on election day, and the oldest of Gen Z is 27. You won’t find any Gen Z candidates for U.S. Senate, are one has to be at least thirty years old to run. 

Come November 5th, voters across the nation will likely encounter 21 Gen Z candidates and at least 220 millennial candidates and on their ballots in races for U.S. Congress. The number of millennials rose 79% from 2020, when 123 people ran for office in that age group.

“There’s this false narrative out there that young people are either totally apathetic and don’t care about politics, or the only way they get engaged is to tweet or say their opinion on social media but they don’t actually do anything,” Zaidane says, “And so, for me, this data that shows the growing participation, not just as voters, but actually putting themselves out there as potential leaders within our political system, that, to me, is really exciting and it does a lot to counter that narrative.”