When the polls opened for the last municipal elections, Manav Dhawan was among the many students who were nowhere near the ballot box.
Between the long lines and a busy school schedule, he didn’t feel it was worth his effort to go vote.
“I didn’t get home until 6:30-7:00 p.m., and heard about how long the lines were and how long it takes to register your vote,” said Dhawan.
As a student, Dhawan’s concerns don’t feel heard, whether it is cost of living or transit issues, he thinks that “nothing is going to change,” noting that his local candidates’ campaigns often felt similar and sounded like “word salad.”
He says he would have liked to vote, but didn’t feel it was worth it. Coupled with the long lines and a general distrust of politicians, Dhawan has the impression that politicians don’t have his best interests in mind.
“I think politicians just want the access and power that comes with being in those positions… I think they kind of cater to whoever’s giving them the most money,” said Dhawan.
Half of young Canadians not voting
While Elections Calgary does not collect voter demographic data for municipal elections, Elections Canada does for federal elections. There has been a marked decline in young voters (aged 18-24) since the 2015 federal election.
In 2015, 57.1 per cent of eligible young voters voted in the federal election. This number decreased to 53.9 per cent in the 2019 federal election, then to 46.7 per cent in the 2021 federal election.
No data has been published for this year’s federal election in April.
For the Calgarian Alex Williams, having younger candidates can help with low youth turnout. Williams ran for city council under the Calgary Party banner, campaigning on a platform of affordability and transit reform.
“I think it’s great that young people are able to see somebody that they can relate to a little bit more, running for city council,” said Williams. “I know a lot of my volunteers were university students, and a lot of their excitement came because, ‘Oh, this is somebody I can relate to.’”
Young people represent a substantial voting block that is underrepresented in politics, and they can create change.
Ryan Montgomery, the president of Model UN at MRU, points to Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 New York City mayoral election victory as proof.
“One guy… built mostly on a coalition of young people, is now the scion of the, the American [left], and even the global left in a lot of ways,” said Montgomery. “He wasn’t some all-powerful billionaire beforehand.”
Montgomery worries about the prevailing cynicism about politics and advocates for young people to be involved in the political process to avoid Gen Z becoming more jaded.
“There aren’t a lot of terribly young people in politics… Young people don’t have the influence or the money to really make your voice heard the same way that older generations do,” said Montgomery.
“[It becomes] a vicious cycle that young people don’t have influence in politics…they become dispossessed, and they don’t get involved. And then because they don’t do that, they have less influence, so they get less involved.”
Worldwide youth democratic disengagement
Low youth voter turnout is not just an isolated incident in Calgary or even in Canada – it is a global issue. However, many countries in the world are experimenting with different solutions to address this problem.
In Austria, the voting age was lowered from 18 to 16, and in other parts of Europe, civic education is becoming a staple in school curricula, teaching students about democracy and politics.
For Montgomery, the solution starts with building a coalition of young voters.
“If you get all the young people together and then you can turn that into a workable voting bloc, then suddenly young people have a lot of power,” said Montgomery. “You can change a city, you can change your province, you can change your country.”
Urging young people to take action before it’s too late, Montgomery quotes the Ancient Greek general Pericles, saying, “You should take an interest in politics before politics takes an interest in you.”