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Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Matt Katz, keeping the big seat warm for Brian today. Now, we'll take some time to understand the political beliefs and behaviors of the youngest generation of voters in our country, Gen Z. This November, 41 million Zoomers will be eligible to vote, and 8 million of them will be hitting the polls in a national election for the first time. Despite pollsters' tendencies to describe young voters as a monolithic group, Gen Z is the most diverse generation in history.

According to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, 45% of voters ages 18 to 27 are people of color. If you're not convinced of the significance of Gen Z's diversity as they enter the voting electorate, youth of color make up just over half of new voters in key southern states like Georgia, Texas, and Florida. There are 40% of new voters in battleground states like Arizona and Nevada.

Ultimately, if Zoomers show up to the polls, they could be the group that swings the election, but do they know the power that they hold? Will they show up to vote? What's keeping Gen Z from harnessing their political might? What issues matter to them the most? Let's ask them. We often host unofficial, unscientific polls on this show, given the unique quality of our audience, so we'll consider the results with this in mind. Let's also take this as a Gen Z Town Hall of sorts.

It's an opportunity to hear directly from crucial voters about who aren't necessarily represented in our caller base as frequently. Gen Z listeners, the floor is yours. Clearing the phone lines just for Gen Z. What issues are most important to you in the upcoming elections? How civically or politically engaged are you and your friends? Do you follow politics? Do you talk about these issues with your peers? What keeps you from voting or participating in politics? Have you decided who you're voting for in November just yet? Give us a call. Send us a text. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Joining us now to talk through these issues and give us some context and data here is Erika Weisz. She's the principal behavioral scientist at Murmuration, which is a nonprofit research organization focused on amplifying the power of civic engagement. Erika is here to share the findings from multiple studies that Murmuration has conducted on Generation Z ahead of the 2024 elections. Erika, welcome to WNYC.

Erika Weisz: Hi, Matt. Thank you so much for having me.

Matt Katz: I'm excited to talk to you about this.

Erika Weisz: Likewise.

Matt Katz: I began the segment by highlighting the potential of Gen Z to influence the outcome of this year's elections. Can you pick up where I left off?

Erika Weisz: [chuckles] Yes.

Matt Katz: Why'd your organization focus on this group rather than other generations that vote more reliably?

Erika Weisz: Like you said, and I think you articulated well, Gen Z is an extremely heterogeneous generation, both in terms of their racial demographics, but also in terms of their views and their attitudes. We wanted to understand what things tended to be most compelling for Gen Z, because, like you said, they are positioned to have huge sway over all elections, and it's important for us to understand what might motivate them to vote.

The other thing I want to flag about Gen Z is that they are a bit of a puzzle to those of us who study motivation and political engagement because they tend to be engaged civically, at least in terms of voting, at much higher rates than previous generations when they were the same age, which I think is quite remarkable and hopefully a little bit inspirational too.

They do this too against the backdrop, I think, of a very well publicized mental health crisis, which makes them even more enigmatic to people like me, who also traffic in psychology, that somehow, they're able to retain this high level of civic engagement despite experiencing high levels of anxiety and depression.

Matt Katz: I imagine you didn't use landlines to investigate this issue and to try to reach Gen Z. What was your methodology? How did you conduct this research?

Erika Weisz: We conducted this research in a couple of different ways. We ran nationally representative surveys, and we did this with a polling firm named SocialSphere, who specifically polls young voters. Then we also had some accompanying focus groups where we got to actually talk with Zoomers and add some context to the numbers that we were seeing from our surveys.

The exciting thing, I think, for us is that we were able to align our quantitative findings from our nationally representative survey with our focus group participants' answers. We have, I think, a pretty rigorous representation, both quantitatively from our nationally representative surveys and from our qualitative focus groups, about how Zoomers are feeling and how that compares to older generations too.

Matt Katz: The first report you published on this was on Gen Z and delves into the various barriers that prevent young voters from engaging in politics. Pollsters tasked with predicting election outcomes often disregard young voters as a group that's hard to activate, less likely to show up to vote, but that's not really accurate, right? You said that they're engaged. Are they less likely to show up to vote?

Erika Weisz: Yes. That's a really interesting question. If you look globally at the entire electorate, it is the case that young people tend to be less likely to vote than older people. There are a lot of reasons for that, and one of them is because if you're running a campaign, you might turn to something called the voter file to figure out who you should reach out to in order to turn out voters for your candidate or for the policy you're hoping to push. Now, because young voters are young, they are less likely to be in the voter file.

What that means is that they're less likely to have voted, and therefore, they're less likely to show up in a database saying, this is whom you should contact if you want to turn someone out. There is some strategy to contacting people that we call high-propensity voters. If you neglect to reach out to young voters, you're missing an entire segment of highly motivated, highly activatable people.

Yes, you're right, youth voters do tend to show up at lower rates to vote than older voters, but if you look at, say, my generation of Millennials when we were 18 to 27, or older generations like Gen Xers when they were 18 to 27, what you see is that Zoomers are shattering our records. Even though youth voters tend to show up less frequently than older voters, for youth voters, they're showing up at extremely high rates, which suggests to us that they should be a leading candidate for whom organizations should contact if they want to turn out more voters for their causes.

Matt Katz: I imagine they're also harder to reach, harder to contact than other generations.

Erika Weisz: It depends. Like you said, if we're using landlines, we are not going to get youth voters. One of the things that we see over and over again in our research, and this was especially true after 2022 in our post-midterm research but remains true now, they are desperate for information, and I don't know if our campaigns and traditional outreach methods have adapted to the way that Zoomers consume information.

There are some very savvy politicians, some very savvy organizations who have figured out that Gen Z tends to get information through social media, through the internet, and they are trying to leverage those platforms. It's in our best interest, I think, to meet them where they're at, to listen when they're telling us that they want us to give them information online and through social media, and to give it to them in a way that's efficient.

One of the things that we heard, both in surveys and focus groups, is that they like simple TikTok infographics where it says something like, this candidate has a voting record in favor of this type of policy, this candidate has strong support for this issue, et cetera."

Matt Katz: Gen Z listeners, floor is yours. Give us a call. How civically or politically engaged are you and your friends? Do you follow politics? Do you talk about issues with your peers? What's keeping you from voting if you're not planning to vote? Or have you already decided who you're voting for in November? Anybody else? Do you have a Gen Z person in your home right now? If so, go over, take their phone, turn off the TikTok, and dial 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, and then give them back the phone and tell them we're talking on the radio about them so they should give us a call.

We're here talking to Erika Weisz, principal behavioral scientist at Murmuration, and we're talking about Gen Z voters. Gen Z is very cynical, Erika. Low levels of confidence in American institutions. What do the numbers there look like?

Erika Weisz: Yes, unfortunately, you're right. Gen Z is cynical about key American institutions, including the Supreme Court, including Congress, the federal government. About half of Gen Z don't think that the federal government affects them at all or in a positive way. One of the other things we see is that Gen Z also tends to be a little bit more cynical about other people. This is some longitudinal data looking at interpersonal trust, and Zoomers, more than older generations, tend to be a little bit mistrustful of other people.

Now, it doesn't feel entirely surprising to me that Zoomers are more cynical about some of our key institutions because I think if you examine the backdrop against which they came of age, climate change and gun violence and recently the overturning of Roe, all of these things have happened during, I think, developmentally critical periods. It doesn't entirely surprise me that they have these high levels of anxiety and distress and low levels of trust and cynicism.

One thing that I hope adds a little bit more optimism to this conversation is that time and time again, when we ask Zoomers, "Who do you believe in to make positive change," they say themselves. I think that they feel empowered. I think they feel inspired by their peers who are out there making change, and I think we might be wise to help them see how their peers are engaged and correct any misperceptions that their peers don't care about the same issues that they care about.

Matt Katz: Can you clarify before we go on what counts as Gen Z? What ages are we talking about?

Erika Weisz: Well, I guess it would probably depend who you ask. In our case, we're talking about adults ages 18 to 27.

Matt Katz: 18 to 27. Got it. Is this generation, compared to other generations at this age range, more cynical? What other differences-- You said that they voted a higher rate than prior generations did when they were young. Are they, though, more cynical than other generations were when they were young?

Erika Weisz: It's a really interesting question and I don't have those data in front of me, but what I can tell you is that everybody, I can't speak for you, Matt, but I guess I can speak for myself, everybody across generations is showing declines in institutional trust as measured by this long-term social survey. Gen Z looks like older adults, but they really stand out from other generations when asked about interpersonal trust.

I don't have answers for how we might remedy that. They look like older adults when it comes to institutional trust. They are a little bit unique when it comes to lower levels of interpersonal trust. It definitely feels like something we ought to try to remedy. I have some ideas for how we could do that, but it's a very complicated picture. They have, I think, every reason in the world to be cynical too.

Matt Katz: I'm a Gen X journalist. I have plenty of institutional distrust. Let's go to the phone lines. We have an actual Gen Z person on the line, Liana in Rockland County. Hi there.

Liana: Hi.

Matt Katz: Thanks for calling in.

Liana: Thanks for having me. Yes, I'm Gen Z. I'm 16 years old. I'm working with an organization called Girls Learning International this summer, and I'm working with a group of fellow Gen Z mates. Some are in college and some are in high school. We had a big interest in seeing how other people are viewing this election and looking into the way that people are feeling about the election, especially Gen Z, and so this broadcast is really interesting to me.

Matt Katz: Oh, cool. What--

Liana: I run an Instagram account with a group of people that's called ChooseYourAmerica2024, and more towards September, we're going to start putting out interviews with people just depending on topic, maybe teachers, people that work specific jobs like lower income or just students in general, and interviewing them, asking just broad questions about how they're feeling about this election just to make people feel more included and not alone with their thoughts.

Then after posting those, we can put in links for information so that people aren't scrambling around looking for news about their candidate and how to inform themselves on what is going on in the world right now.

Matt Katz: Oh, that is so cool, Liana. I'm so glad you're doing that. I'm curious what issues that you think are most important that you hope the presidential candidates might be talking about in the next couple of months. I'm curious about what issues you think are important and also where you get your news, where you get information about those issues.

Liana: Oh, okay. I love that question. Some issues I think are important right now are-- I think women's rights is definitely up for discussion currently. As a woman, that's very important to me. I'm just growing up in this time, and I don't want to ever be in a situation that I can't choose my own policies if that makes any sense.

Matt Katz: Sure.

Liana: Also, I think I care a lot about the education system. I've seen some discussion around America about book bans, and that's very frightening to me. I think that we shouldn't have our exposure clouded by one person's belief for another. I also think religious freedom is a really big thing that's for America. That's been a part of our constitution from the beginning, and I think that there should be separation between religion and government. Those are some things that I've been keeping an eye out.

Matt Katz: Cool.

Liana: Then some news sources that I've been getting my information from is-- What? Sorry, my mom is right next to me. [laughter] Oh, obviously NPR. Every time we're in the car, it's playing. Then also, The New York Times is just always on my feed. Just the regular channels on the TV is also always playing in my house. I think I also get a lot from social media. I know that's controversial, but as a Gen Z person, it is realistic and just-- I do. I get a lot from sources on social media.

Matt Katz: Yes, that's okay. I'm sure your mom does as well.

Liana: Yes.

Matt Katz: Erika, can I ask if you have any questions for Liana? You're the researcher.

Erika Weisz: Yes. I so appreciate your call, and I'm so heartened to hear that you've figured out what it took us a really long time to figure out scientifically, which is it's best to reach Zoomers through Instagram, so I'm going to follow ChooseYourAmerica2024. It sounds exactly like you're doing everything right. Two things I want to tell you are that in our post-midterm election research, we found that Zoomers were more likely to say that abortion was the issue top of mind for them when they were casting their ballot than any other issue, including the economy.

The reason that's outstanding and kind of fascinating is because no other generation ranked that as the top issue. We hear a ton, and rightfully so, about economic concerns, but it makes somebody like me wonder about the differences between issues that young voters especially feel that they might have agency over in casting their ballot and issues where they feel they have less agency. It really seems that abortion and women's access to it is top of mind for a lot of young people, similar to what you said.

The other thing I wanted to say is, just like you said, people who are not my age or older tend to be getting their information on social media, and they desperately want this information. This is just me hopefully saying to you, stay the course, keep doing the work you're doing. No shame in the game of being on social media because you know exactly how to reach the people that we need to reach.

Matt Katz: Liana, give us the name of that Instagram account one more time so our listeners can follow you.

Liana: Sure. It's all one word, ChooseyourAmerica2024. We're going to start posting interviews and information more towards September when school starts because that's just easier for the group.

Matt Katz: Liana, thank you so much for calling. You've injected a breadth of optimism into all of our listeners.

Erika Weisz: Truly.

Matt Katz: We really appreciate it, and thank your mom for turning on WNYC in the car and everywhere else. We appreciate you. Thank you. Erika, I'm curious, we have about a minute or two left, do you have any recommendations for activists, politicians, community members to earn the trust of Gen Z and increase their participation going forward?

Erika Weisz: I do. I do, yes. I think it's incredibly important to reach out to young voters, and there are lots of challenges that make it more difficult to reach out to young voters than to older adults. Earlier in our interview, I mentioned [unintelligible 00:20:38] on the voter file as a major barrier, but I would recommend engaging Zoomers themselves, people like Liana, who we just spoke with, and people who are active on social media and equip them with information that they can share with their followers about the logistics of voting, so how to request an absentee ballot, how to register if you're not already registered, and also about candidates and their platforms.

What we saw in our post-election research in 2022 is that about one in three voters who were Gen Z said that they didn't feel like they had enough information about candidates and their platforms. The statistic that was even more interesting to me is that 1 in 2, so 50% of people who didn't vote, so of Zoomers who didn't vote in 2022, said that the main issue was a lack of information. It seems like there is an information gap that would be easily remedied by campaigns and reaching out to Gen Z voters, especially on social media. I'm really hoping that that's what organizers and activists start leveraging as we gear up for 2024.

Matt Katz: My guest has been Erika Weisz, principal behavioral scientist at Murmuration, where she studied the youngest generation of voters. Erika, this was so interesting. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Erika Weisz: Thanks, Matt. Be well.

Matt Katz: You too.

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