EAST LANSING, MI - NOVEMBER 08: People wait to vote at a polling location on the Michigan State University campus on Election Day on November 8, 2022 in East Lansing, Michigan. After months of candidates campaigning, Americans are voting in the midterm elections to decide close races across the nation.

Republicans are urging the party to do a better job engaging with young voters after the GOP saw Generation Z voters cast ballots by large margins for Democrats in the November midterms, making the difference in key congressional and gubernatorial races.

While the party has long struggled with attracting younger voters, the 2022 midterm election underscored the extent to which those struggles are a liability for it. Now, Republicans are calling on the party to step up its outreach, including by finding more Gen Z surrogates, engaging with young voters on social media platforms and speaking to issues those voters care about.

“When you ignore people’s bread-and-butter concerns and their more cultural concerns, you can’t expect to win their votes. And we’re having a series of close elections and the Republicans are just throwing away an entire demographic, and it’s costing them elections,” said veteran GOP strategist Keith Naughton.

An analysis by Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) using day-after estimates suggests that voter turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds in 2022 was at the second highest of the last 30 years for a midterm election. In House races alone, the demographic favored Democratic candidates to Republicans 63 percent to 35 percent, remaining mostly consistent since 2020 but a slight drop from 2018 when the margin was 67 percent to 32 percent. 

Overall, more than a quarter of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 are estimated to have cast a ballot during the November midterms, according to an analysis of Edison Research’s National Election Poll Survey by CIRCLE, often playing a critical role in battleground races.

David Morgan, a senior at Pennsylvania State University and the political director of Penn State College Republicans, believes the GOP is facing challenges with young voters because they’re not speaking to social policies and issues.

“Better health care, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, stuff like that, … climate change, those issues are huge for Gen Z. And because the party kind of is a little bit slow on the uptake initially with kind of some of these issues, so I think it kind of automatically slanted our generation to go more towards Democrat,” he noted.

Other Republicans say the problem lies not only with the substance of their messaging, but also with the method of communication.

“We have a tendency to do a lot of things wrong talking to younger voters. One is we don’t go to where they are,” said veteran GOP strategist John Brabender, noting how young voters are increasingly on TikTok.