College-aged kids have some of the worst voter turnout—and municipal politics often see the least engagement. What will it take to get young people to the polls?
By Shreya Basu
LYDIA MILJAN CAN’T help but notice young people’s engrossment in the digital world. At restaurants, she watches them stare intently at their phones, often rather than the person sitting across from them.
She’s a department head and professor of political science at the University of Windsor and sees this as part of a broader shift in how the youth relate to one another and show up in their communities.
Decades ago, Miljan explains, youth were more likely to share routines that fostered connection with the people around them. They watched the same nightly news, socialized in community groups and learned from older colleagues in the workplace. These everyday interactions helped establish a shared understanding of what it meant to participate in civic life.
Today, she says, those connections and routines have weakened—if not disappeared entirely.
The daily newspaper is no longer something that lands at everyone’s front door at the crack of dawn. Instead, today’s youth are expected to seek out political information themselves. In an election season, that can carry a lot of weight.
“We’re so reliant on social media and the internet that the expectation is that the voters themselves know how to find this,” Miljan says.
The same is expected of the youth voters here at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) too.
In the weeks leading up to the Oct. 26 municipal elections in Toronto and across the province, TMU saw a number of campus events related to them: debates between mayoral candidates and Ward 13 candidates; collaborations with advocacy groups on voter issues; and even conversations with sitting Members of Provincial Parliament (MPP). The goal, organizers of these events have said, is to mobilize the youth vote and bring civic engagement back to the fore. But low student attendance has been the mark of many of these events—raising questions about Gen Z’s relationship with electoral politics.
Drawing on the work of American political scientist Robert Putnam, Miljan argues that the decline of communal life may help explain why fewer young people are participating in electoral politics.
In his book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Putnam posits that with the rise of communication technology—beginning with the advent of the television—emerged a society in which people continue to pursue the same activities but increasingly do so alone, rather than as part of a community.
In many places, people don’t even know their neighbours anymore, he argued.
Miljan, whose research focuses on electoral reform and municipal policy, explains how Putnam’s theories translate into real voting habits. When people have fewer opportunities to build relationships and develop shared civic habits—especially if they are moving between wards, and don’t have the time to grow attached to a community—voting can become less of a routine and less of a priority.
Gen Z are often characterized as an incredibly politically conscientious generation—they partake in boycotts, sign petitions, attend political rallies and debate social issues through online forums. These are all still communal activities.
However, despite their level of engagement in those non-electoral forms, Statistics Canada data showed that those aged 18 to 30 are the least likely to vote across federal, provincial and municipal elections.
Political scientists, Miljan explained lower youth voter turnout through the life-cycle effect, which argues that people tend to become more politically engaged later in life.
“You’re going to school, you’re starting your lives,” says Miljan. “Politics at any level isn’t as important to you. As you become more stable [in] employment, you start paying more taxes, you become more interested.”
However, Miljan is more concerned with what she describes as the generational effect, wherein successive generations appear to be voting at lower rates than those before them did at the same age.
ON A RELATIVELY warm day in September, Toronto Centre MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam visited campus on the invitation of the Toronto Metropolitan Students’ Union (TMSU). The union had hoped Wong-Tam could speak with students about affordability and the Ontario Student Assistance Program—in the end, less than 10 students showed up.
Teresa Baricevic, the vice-president of education of the TMSU, says she thinks the turnout may have been low because of their own limited outreach efforts, citing an internal delay. But she wouldn’t call the event a waste. It served as a learning opportunity for their next one, a panel with Ward 13 candidates running for city councillor on Oct. 19.
“We promoted [the Oct. 19 event] through Instagram and our email newsletters, several times and earlier than we had for the Wong-Tam event… There was a lot of word of mouth about this event as well,” Baricevic says.
Admittedly, the All-Candidate Ward panel had a much higher turnout, with 40 to 45 RSVPs, a nearly full room with both students and members of the public.
Unlike the event with Wong-Tam, where Baricevic along with the TMSU president led much of the discussion themselves, they took a different approach this time, acting as moderators while attendees directed questions to the candidates.
The format also allowed audience members to direct questions to specific candidates rather than having every candidate to weigh in on every issue. Questions submitted through TMSU’s Instagram in the week leading up to the event were brought into the discussion, which extended engagement beyond those physically in attendance.
The questions pushed the session past its scheduled end time. But to Baricevic, the extra time was welcome. “[Students] had mentioned that they are actually looking forward to seeing more of these election based or politically engaging events coming up on campus.”
For Baricevic, smaller turnouts will not deter the TMSU from organizing events like these. “We really just want to continue doing our best to get as many students as involved as possible, because there are so many topics within the government right now that are affecting students pretty heavily,” she says.
For many TMU students, however, attending events on campus in the evening is not always feasible. With many students commuting to campus, often over long distances of more than an hour, staying after classes end means an even later journey home.
Rosandra Gonzalez, a third-year creative industries student, who commutes from Richmond Hill, Ont., says this is the case for her.
“Sometimes I’ll be so tired from the day from commuting here, I don’t want to stay even later and then get home even later, after I’ve had already such a long day,” Gonzalez says.
Baricevic, on the other hand, feels that events held earlier in the day are unlikely to draw in more students, and that “afternoon into evenings” are their best bet.
For some students, however, to engage effectively with local politics does not necessarily mean attending election events on campus.
Pushpa Saha, a second-year media production student who voted in the municipal election, said her reasons for engaging in local electoral politics stems partly from growing up in a politically educated and engaged household.
“A big influence is [that] the news is always on in my house. Even if I don’t want it to be, I always know what’s going on or [about] any issues in the city. And my parents vote. So it’s kind of like, I don’t see why I shouldn’t vote,” Saha says.
Despite casting a ballot, Saha says she has rarely discussed the election with her peers and she can’t recall talking about it with anyone other than her parents prior to the election.
Part of the problem, she suggests, is the sense of disillusionment that can come from constantly consuming negative news online. She says scrolling through social media, particularly Facebook—where she is currently house hunting, making housing a key issue she paid attention to in the election—can leave her feeling as though the world is getting worse and people are increasingly hostile toward one another.
“When people see that, it’s easy to get into that apathetic mindset of: ‘This isn’t going to change, so I’m not going to do anything about it,’” she says.
President of the Toronto Metropolitan Association of Part-Time Students (TMAPS), Rose Finlay, echoed this sentiment when asked about the low student turnout at the town hall they co-hosted on Sept. 24 with TTCriders, a transit advocacy group. The event intended to educate students about how transit decisions affect them and their communities ahead of Toronto’s municipal election.
“The challenge is not so much that students or young people are necessarily apathetic when it comes to politics, it’s more [so] that they feel unheard,” she says.
“Most young people feel like the system is broken and they don’t see it as a democracy. So they feel like, ‘why would I show up? Why would I learn more? Why would I speak on something that I feel like I have no control over anyways?,’” Finlay says.
At TMAPS, Finlay says they see voter engagement as part of their responsibility to help students understand their rights, help them to learn how to connect with decision makers and have a voice in decisions that affect their lives.
“We’re not there to solve political disengagement with a single town hall. But, we’re hoping that we can help create opportunities for students to ask questions, challenge decision makers and just recognize that their voices deserve to be heard,” Finlay says.
MILJAN DOESN’T NECESSARILY feel it’s fair to say the younger generation doesn’t care about politics. She believes their involvement shows up in other places, such as through online political engagement and non-electoral outlets, like protest movements.
“I think it’s just that the way we engage now with social media, people might think that it’s enough to just like and share. That’s still participation too, and, and I think that how we measure as political scientists has to be more nuanced,” Miljan said.
According to a national public opinion survey conducted by Abacus Data in 2021, 74 per cent of youth considered it important for them to be actively solving problems in their community and 78 per cent wanted to learn more about how to make a positive difference in their community.
Voter apathy among youth can also partly be attributed to the complexity of municipal elections, which require every voter to pick a mayor, a city councillor and a school board trustee.
Unlike provincial and federal elections, municipal elections require voters to navigate a ballot without the party affiliations that can help them identify candidates whose views align with their own.
Miljan emphasized how this places an additional burden on voters, who must research individual candidates for mayor, city council and school board trustee.
“We don’t have a party system at the municipal level, so it requires that much more work on the part of voters,” Miljan said.
Finding information about candidates can be another obstacle. While municipal websites typically provide lists of candidates and their contact information, Miljan said voters must visit individual websites and social media accounts to learn about their platforms and priorities.
That’s why, this last election cycle, candidates are also adapting how they reach voters. The incumbent candidate, and now mayor-elect, Olivia Chow launched a dedicated TikTok account for her re-election campaign in the weeks leading up to Toronto’s municipal election, likely an effort to expand her reach on a platform popular among younger audiences.
Over in Milton, Zainab Azim engaged in a municipal campaign that closely resembled the viral effort borne out of New York City, which won democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani the mayoral chair. Their tactics? Reach the youth through funky graphics, meme-esque content and by making their policies digestible in less than two-minute clips that ooze with charisma. According to CIRCLE, the youth voter turnout in the 2025 New York City elections was 28 per cent—“a major increase” from years past. And 75 per cent of the youth vote went to Mamdani.
For students, however, the engagement challenge can extend beyond finding information. Miljan says younger voters, who are much more likely to move frequently and rent rather than own homes, can often have weaker ties to the communities where they live. As a result, they may be less familiar with their ward’s issues, their city councillor or the responsibilities of municipal government.
This is also echoed by Emmanuel Eyeoyibo, a first-year occupational health and safety student, who recently moved to Toronto from Ottawa for university and feels a lack of connection to local politics.
While evening events would not pose much of a problem, he admitted that local politics had yet to become a priority.
“I don’t really care about local politics, but I should,” Eyeoyibo said.
Eyeoyibo’s views are reflected in Elections Canada data measuring levels of political interest across Canada, which shows that 45 per cent of Canadians in the 18-22 age group are somewhat interested in politics, while only 12 per cent say they are very interested.
It’s a problem that the candidates running in Toronto’s municipal elections would benefit from solving.
In the heat of the campaign, front-runners Chow and Brad Bradford had both made solving youth unemployment a part of their promise. Both made several appearances on “Student Vote,” an initiative that runs mock voting stations across elementary and high schools parallel to actual elections so that students know what it’s like to cast a ballot before they are eligible to do so. Whether the youth turned out for them, though, is a question that only the ballot box can answer.
“I HOPE THAT our students are voting today,” TMU president Mohamed Lachemi tells The Eyeopener on the afternoon of Oct. 26. “Universities can help build students’ confidence in voting and I’m proud of the different initiatives that TMU is doing to promote voter turnout,” he said.
On Monday, thousands lined up outside of polling stations from 10 a.m. to late in the evening. Among them, several young TMU students who took detours before or after class, sometimes on the instruction of their professors, to first cast their ballot. The Student Community Centre also turned itself into a polling station; yellow sign posts and a flag waving from the entrance beckoned students to their civic duty.
By the night of Oct. 26, rumblings of a winner were confirmed: Chow, number nine on the ballot, is getting her second term. Roughly 46 per cent of Toronto had turned out to cast their vote. Details about the youth vote were not immediately available.
Standing in front of a crowd of supporters at her election night HQ in Parkdale, Chow said, “Tonight, I want to thank everyone who participated in our democracy. Because democracy is something precious. Something we must never take for granted. Something we have to work to maintain. With our votes. With our hard work. Always.”
She said she doesn’t forget coming to Toronto at 13, and how her experience as a child, in the community, influenced her foray into politics.
The future Gen-Z mayor of Toronto is also somewhere in the city today. Engaged and active in local politics, in their own way.
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