Op-Ed: The neglect of younger voters is a lost opportunity for political parties
Today is an important day in many ways, not least because it will see the launch of a new party that is trying to bring a fresh perspective to politics and our society.
But there’s one group of voters who are under-represented in our politics today, and they don’t show up as much as they should as politicians try to lure them to become the next big thing.
I call them Generation Z. And I like to think that it might be time for us to recognise that we have an opportunity as a political party to build the future and we need to seize it.
I first started to think about this group a long time ago.
I used to work at a high-performing organisation in New York that was trying to provide leadership and training to those at the top of their industry. And I used to work with ambitious but well-meaning, young people.
And I saw how easily the young could be convinced to join the workforce or the industry as a career path, or the life-path, or the family’s life-path, or their faith’s life-path.
And I used to call them ‘Generation X’ – young for those born after 1945, but in the same way that Generation Y is born after 1978.
But then I asked myself what made the young people in my organisation more or less ambitious – and I realised that they weren’t just older, but they were also more ambitious than their peers.
They were just more ambitious than their older peers. They were more ambitious, maybe, because they were just more ambitious than their older peers.
Generation Z is more ambitious than generations that have come before because they are more ambitious than their older peers because they are more ambitious than their older peers because they are more ambitious than their older peers because they are more ambitious than their older peers because they are more ambitious than their older peers because they are more ambitious than their older peers because they are more ambitious than their older peers because they are more ambitious
