After Gen Z voters turned out in record numbers in 2020, a nascent but growing crop of consulting firms hopes to help candidates better reach an electorate skeptical of more traditional appeals.
“The Gen Z electorate can make or break elections in some of our key races,” said Ashley Aylward, 26, a research manager at HIT Strategies, a Washington-based public opinion research firm that focuses on youth and minority voters.
The firm was started in 2019 “because we were seeing so many political operatives who were just downloading the emerging electorate — young people, people of color,” she said.
About 8.3 million young people qualified to vote in the 2022 election, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. As most of Gen Z reaches voting age, experts have advised candidates to change their strategies to appeal to young voters.
“Young voters care a lot, and they’re engaged in politics, they’re just engaged in very different ways than the candidates and a lot of older officials want,” Aylward said.
Her firm’s clients include Mandela Barnes, the Democratic lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, who is running a tight Senate race against Republican incumbent Ron Johnson, and Chris Jones, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Arkansas, who is trailing Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders. .
Experts said social media — and especially TikTok — is central to strategizing for the Gen Z vote in the 2022 election. The Chinese-owned video app, which U.S. officials and lawmakers have warned against using in 2020 because of concerns over the risks of potential safety, has exploded in popularity among target groups of young people: 26% of 19-29-year-olds take regularly. news from TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center study published last month.
“I can say that TikTok in particular has definitely been a platform that we’re all thinking about a lot more than we were in 2020,” said Caitlyn McNamee, an account director at BerlinRosen, a communications firm whose clients in the past include former Democratic MP Beto. O’Rourke, who is challenging Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas, and Pete Buttigieg, a former Indiana mayor who became the Biden administration’s transportation secretary after losing his bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Experts pointed out that Gen Z cares about originality and randomness; Candidates can “miss the point” when they “don’t use the language that young people use,” Aylward said. “They don’t just take off the politician’s mask and tell it like it is.”
“When I talk to candidates and other organizations to give advice, I often tell them to engage on TikTok, even though they think it’s crazy,” she said. “I want to engage on Twitter and Instagram, but not where you’re going on and just listing your political points. You must be stupid.”
Some candidates seem to be heeding the advice. On Wednesday, Barnes posted a TikTok of herself wrapping multiple churros in foil with a caption that read, “When you have a canvas at 15 but can’t leave without churros…” That same day, Jones reposted a TikTok of approval video by Rachel Cox, a Democratic candidate for state representative in Arkansas, in which she and a friend are dressed as peanut butter and jelly.
Content that appears inauthentic can actually have the “opposite effect” of what was intended, said Anmol Dhalla, 21, the former CEO of Gen Z-focused consulting firm Genzup, who now works in real estate.
Erifili Gounari, 22, founder and CEO of another Gen Z consulting firm, The Z Link, added: “Being so digitally immersed from a young age, we have a kind of ability to point out content or inauthentic campaigns or people. Because if something looks too much like marketing, it will lose Gen Z’s interest very quickly.”
As Gen Z continues to age in the electorate, Aylward stressed the importance of “meeting them where they are” and the danger of seeing candidates and campaigns “speak” only to older generations.
“They will continue to age in the electorate. And this will be a problem that we will have to face and learn how to engage,” she said.
