Will Gen Z Turn Out to Vote in 2024?

That 2022 referendum had been placed on the August 2022 primary ballot, ahead of the November 2022 midterm general election in Kansas, as a strategic choice by its supporters who believed that historic patterns of lackluster voter turnout during primary elections would hold, giving their energized supporters an advantage to pass the referendum.

Instead of lackluster primary turnout, however, the Value Them Both measure was defeated in a landslide after Kansans registered and voted in unexpected numbers in August 2022, with surges in GenZ registration and voting especially noteworthy.

Despite that registration and voting surge in August 2022, three months later many of these same newly registered Gen Zs sat out the November general election, which featured a reelection bid by the incumbent Democratic Governor. (Data documenting this GenZ registration and voting behavior is provided in the accompanying Appendix).

This documented decrease in turnout among GenZ voters, for the November 2022 Kansas general election, offers a cautionary tale for political candidates, because even though the incumbent Democratic Governor in Kansas was reelected by a slim margin, the decreased GenZ turnout in that general election signifies that any given candidate should not assume either that:

• Gen Zs are aware that a candidate supports a common cause in unison with them, or
• Even if aware of a candidate’s support for the common cause, that such awareness will translate into mobilization and a vote for that candidate

In summary, the data suggests that motivating this GenZ cohort to mobilize requires additional work by candidates, both to inform and to persuade them that electing candidates who support their common cause is necessary. To achieve this outcome, weaving narratives which tie the candidate to a cause of common interest is a crucial first step, and the next step is deciphering how to get those messages in front of the right GenZ audiences.

So, for candidates seeking to reach persuadable Gen Zs to inform and mobilize them, the question is how to reach them?

At first blush this may appear to be a daunting task, because a pervasive narrative about GenZ is that their primary source of information is shortform video, watched on social media platforms.

But beyond this generalization, a deeper look at the data shows that many in the GenZ cohort do tune in to traditional media sources, like TV for example. The following two snapshots provide insights into some of the ways that GenZ TV viewing behavior compares and contrasts with other age groups – and even how their TV viewing behaviors differ, within the GenZ age cohort, from one local market to another:

Moreover, an increasing body of evidence suggests that many in the GenZ cohort are aware that social media is rife with disinformation and understand the value of mainstream media as a trusted source when processing information to distinguish fact from falsehood. For example, after Comscore added this inquiry to panel-survey questionnaires: “I mainly use social media to keep up with news & current events (social media opinion) AND Visit general news websites for political information,” our Plan Metrix data showed that GenZ audiences on the Top 50 News platforms increased by 26% from June 2023 to February 2024. ¹

Furthermore, beyond the narrative that many in this cohort rely on TikTok videos and influencer-narrated articles to get news, the year over year data from 2023 to 2024 also confirms increasing numbers consuming traditional news media as well. These year-over-year comparisons offer recent examples of such increased news consumption:

For those who have been highlighting the societal challenges created by a deluge of unfiltered information, this data offers encouraging signs which can be summarized this way:

• As the volume of information we are each exposed to in the digital age increases, it becomes increasingly challenging to distinguish accurate information from disinformation;
• This problem is exacerbated because many sources from which we receive information are not subject to traditional curation processes, such as journalistic sourcing and editorial standards;
• So, in an Age of Disinformation, it is increasingly left to the individual to develop information-curation techniques to determine the validity of information we are consuming;
• In the context of the upcoming 2024 elections, the data showing an increase in GenZ news-consumption suggests they are engaging in this information-curation process, by turning to news.

That news-consumption data therefore provides an invaluable roadmap for candidates seeking to reach GenZ as they engage in their information-curation process, with persuasion messaging, and here’s why.

Research into the News Halo Effect documents an aura of reliability which reputable news publishers enjoy from the confidence placed in them by viewers or readers. Comscore’s Halo Initiative reporting offers research supporting this halo effect. In summary, those who advertise on a reliable News platform benefit by engaging its audiences inside the platform’s aura of reliability, yielding higher levels of audience attention and conversion. So, for candidates looking to reach Gen Z with persuasion-messaging, advertising on those News programs that GenZ is consuming will attain those benefits.

Now, with this Comscore reporting showing measurable GenZ audiences tuning in to reliable news platforms, we can build on the ongoing Halo Initiative discussion. The panel-survey data in particular supports one reasonable explanation for the increasing GenZ audiences, which is that they are on a quest for reliable sources of information from which to derive grounding from an ever-increasing inundation of raw information received through various unfiltered channels. As they apply self-curation practices to acquire reliable information upon which to make informed choices, the Comscore data shows measurably increasing GenZ audiences turning to traditional news sources, applying sound journalistic standards. So those seeking to reach and persuade prospective GenZ voters during the 2024 election cycle ought to take heed and seriously consider reliable news as a key platform for their outreach and messaging efforts, because, that outreach can benefit from the aura of reliability placed in responsible news organizations by their audiences.

Appendix

GenZs registered and turned out in record numbers for the Kansas primary election in August 2022, but many skipped the general Midterm election altogether that November.

(The data below is summarized from the article Who’s Watching Those Political Ads Anyway?, Post-Dobbs insights from 2022’s Kansas election and what they portend for 2024)

Registration-correlations related to both Millennial and GenZ activity include that:

1. these groups rivaled or led other age demographic groups in registrations, with Females outpacing Males; and
2. GenZ Females and Males both registered at higher levels than their corollaries in other age groups:

In one particularly intriguing trend, voting by Millennial and GenZ groups in August 2022 rivaled or outpaced other age groups, but just three months later these same Millennial and GenZ voters sat out the November 2022 midterm election in greater numbers than did voters in the other age groups, as seen in the second chart: