Seven weeks out from the election, around 188,000 young people are missing from the roll.
There are an estimated 440,692 eligible to vote aged 18 to 24, but just over 57% of them have enrolled.
It’s the lowest percentage across all age groups by a huge margin. The next lowest is the 30 to 34 cohort at nearly 83%.
On a Roll is a non-partisan campaign which aims to help young people to enrol and vote. Spokeswoman Adriana Bird told The Front Page that their generation feels their voices are muted in the current political climate.
“I think the feeling of collectivism is something that we really want to push across young people and understanding that while one of us might be a bit easier to ignore, if all hundreds of thousands of us speak together, then we get to have a say in our future,” she said.
This year, Kiwis can no longer enrol on election day. If you’ve not enrolled at any address by midnight, October 25, you won’t be eligible to vote.
“A lot of the young people that we’ve been talking to throughout the kind of building phase of this campaign, um, haven’t even realised that they’re not enrolled.
“I think a lot of young people assume that it happens automatically when they turn 18, and so it’s often actually just a lack of information or just not being kept in the loop from day one and young people are really keen to have their say and really keen to be a part of the decision-making in their future.
“The core element of this campaign is making sure that our fellow generation can and will continue to participate in the decision-making of their future, and that starts with just getting the word out there that you need to enrol, and you need to do it online.
“It takes two minutes, and for this year as well, you need to do it before October 25,” Bird said.
Despite having the second-largest number of members eligible to vote (440,062), the 18 to 24 group has the lowest enrolment at 57.45%.
In comparison, the 70-plus age group has the most eligible members (634,873) and the highest enrolment rate at 103.16%.
At the same time, though, voter turnout data from the last four elections shows that younger voters have progressively become more engaged.
Youth turnout rose by about 15% between 2014 (62.73%) and 2020 (78.02%), before falling in 2023 (74.17%). The “big plunge” in voter turnout as described at the time had been felt across almost all age groups.
In 2014, about one in three enrolled 18-24-year-olds didn’t vote. By 2020, that had fallen to roughly one in five.
Meanwhile, young Māori voters have gone from having a turnout rate barely above 50% in 2014 to around 70% in the past two elections, and they actually bucked the wider youth turnout decline in 2023.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
- The enrolment deadline
- Generational stigma
- Youth enrolment.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald , available to listen to every weekday from 5pm. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio , Apple Podcasts , Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
