Gen Z Is Ready to Vote. Will Democracy Meet Them There? by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., September 7, 2026

Gen Z Is Ready to Vote. Will Democracy Meet Them There?

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

September 7, 2026

Happy Labor Day, everybody and happy to share this encouraging recent piece in The Hill on Gen Z and the 2026 midterms. Gen Zers—or “Zoomers”—matter deeply to me because they, together with younger Millennials, are the young people I teach in college. I do not experience them primarily as a demographic category or a voting bloc. I know them as students: thoughtful, worried about their futures, impatient with hypocrisy, sometimes cynical about politics, but also remarkably attentive to the world around them.

Just behind them is Gen Alpha, today's children and younger teenagers, the oldest of whom are now in their mid-teens. They, too, are watching. They are coming of age amid financial insecurity, political polarization, climate anxiety, war, attacks on public education, rapidly changing technologies, and an affordability crisis that they already understand through their own families. They may not yet be old enough to vote, but they are hardly oblivious to what is going on.

All of this is why the new polling on Gen Z caught my attention.

The Hill article reports that 31 percent of Gen Z voters who supported Donald Trump in 2024 now say they regret that vote, a higher share than among older generations. Trump's approval among Gen Z stood at only 33 percent. 

But the finding I find more interesting is that 40 percent of Gen Z respondents describe politics as “very important” to their personal identity—the highest percentage of any generation surveyed (Feldstein et al., 2026; Smedley & Hamberg, 2026).

Navigator Research aptly titled its report Anything But Apathy. That strikes me as exactly right. Gen Z may be frustrated with politics, but frustration should not be confused with disengagement. These young adults appear to be watching closely, assessing what political leaders promised against what has actually happened, and making judgments accordingly.

Nor do they appear ready to give either political party their unconditional allegiance. Nor should they. This alliegance must be earned by those running for office.

Navigator found considerable dissatisfaction with Trump and pessimism about the economy, but that does not translate automatically into confidence in Democrats. Younger adults are disproportionately represented among what the researchers call “economic persuadables”—people unhappy with Trump's handling of the economy who nevertheless remain unconvinced that Democrats would do better (Smedley & Hamberg, 2026).

Again, I find something encouraging in this.

Young people ought to question what they inherit from us. They should notice when rhetoric and reality do not match. They should be free to change their minds about a candidate or a party without being accused of inconsistency. A vote cast at 18, 20, or 25 should not become a lifetime political identity simply because it was one's first choice.

There is such a thing as political learning.

It happens when experience complicates what we thought we knew. It happens when the consequences of policy show up in rent, grocery bills, tuition, wages, health care, or one's ability to imagine owning a home someday. And sometimes it happens when a voter looks at the person they supported and decides, This is not what I thought I was voting for.

There is another reason to pay attention to Gen Z in 2026. A survey cited by The Hill, conducted by URGE and HIT Strategies, found that 93 percent of the young people surveyed said they would “certainly” or “probably” vote in the midterm elections. Intentions do not always become votes, of course, and youth turnout has historically lagged behind that of older Americans. But nearly 49 million young people ages 18 to 29 will be eligible to vote this November. CIRCLE estimates that roughly 8.5 million of them have entered the electorate since the 2024 presidential election (Stetkiewicz & Searles, 2026).

That is a remarkable amount of potential political power.

Nearly half of these eligible young voters are young people of color, including approximately 10.8 million Latino youth and 6.6 million Black youth. For someone who has spent a career thinking about education, race, citizenship, and inequality, these numbers are difficult to regard as merely electoral statistics. They represent a generation increasingly capable of affecting who governs and, potentially, what government is expected to do.

This is where my optimism about Gen Z collides with something happening right now in Texas.

It would be remiss of me not to mention Tarrant County.

The significance of Tarrant County to this story lies in the convergence of population growth, demographic change, political competitiveness, and access to the ballot. More than two million people live there, and some 1.3 million are registered to vote. 

For decades, Tarrant County was considered reliably Republican. That description fits less comfortably today. Democratic candidates have made significant gains there, and Democrat Taylor Rehmet's striking special-election victory earlier this year in a state Senate district in northern Tarrant County only added to the sense that this once-predictable Republican stronghold has become genuinely competitive (Lenzen, 2026).

Against that backdrop, what happened on September 1 deserves attention well beyond North Texas.

By a 3–2 vote along party lines, the Tarrant County Commissioners Court approved an Election Day plan containing 224 polling sites. During the 2022 midterms, the county had 316. In other words, a growing county with 1.3 million registered voters will go into this November's election with 92 fewer Election Day polling locations—nearly a 30 percent reduction. Early-voting locations will decline as well, from 50 to 47 (Armas & Jenkins, 2026; Lenzen, 2026).

County Judge Tim O'Hare and Commissioners Matt Krause and Manny

Ramirez voted for the plan. Commissioners Alisa Simmons and Roderick Miles Jr. opposed it.

There are competing accounts of what these cuts mean, and it is important to represent them accurately. Elections Administrator Clint Ludwig has described the reductions in terms of efficiency, site availability, statutory requirements, and accessibility issues. O'Hare has argued that the county will still provide sufficient opportunities to vote and that the plan exceeds statutory requirements. Some poll workers have also pointed to historically lower turnout in midterm elections (Armas & Jenkins, 2026).

Opponents see something quite different. Voting-rights advocates, Democratic commissioners, students, and many residents have called the reductions voter suppression, warning that fewer voting locations will mean longer travel, greater inconvenience, confusion, and additional burdens that will not be experienced equally across the county.

And there is an obvious tension here that deserves to be stated plainly. CBS Texas reported that O'Hare himself said higher voter turnout is expected in the upcoming election (Armas & Jenkins, 2026).

So why would a county anticipating higher turnout provide nearly one-third fewer Election Day polling places than it did during the last midterm election?

That is not an accusation of hidden motive. It is a legitimate public-policy question.

The locations at issue also matter. The University of Texas at Arlington's Maverick Activity Center will no longer serve as an Election Day polling place, and efforts to restore voting sites at UTA and Tarrant County College campuses were defeated 3–2. Residents have also expressed concerns about the loss of sites serving Black and Brown neighborhoods.

This is where Tarrant County connects directly to the Gen Z story for me.

A university polling site is more than a dot on an election administrator's map. For a student who may be voting in their first election, the difference between walking across campus after class and figuring out transportation to an unfamiliar off-campus site can matter. So can a work shift, an evening seminar, childcare responsibilities, not owning a car, or simply not knowing the geography of a county where one recently moved to attend college.

None of these obstacles formally takes away a person's right to vote. That is precisely why voting access needs to be understood in more than formal terms. A right can remain intact on paper while becoming considerably more burdensome to exercise.

And those burdens do not fall evenly.

CIRCLE's research is especially relevant here (Stetkiewicz & Searles, 2026). Young voters without college experience already participate at lower rates than their college-going counterparts, and Black and Latino youth have historically voted at lower rates than white youth. Nearly half of the 2026 youth electorate consists of young people of color. 

Source: CIRCLE

The practical architecture of voting—where sites are placed, how easy they are to reach, how much information young voters receive—therefore has equity consequences.

The intensity of the public response in Tarrant County tells us that residents understand what is at stake. More than 100 people addressed the Commissioners Court before the September 1 vote, most of them opposing the cuts, and representatives of some 30 civic groups rallied outside the courthouse. The meeting lasted more than eight hours. After the vote, people in the audience chanted “shame” (Lenzen, 2026).

One voice I particularly hope people will hear is that of Tarrant County resident Laney Hawes, who joined Jacob Soboroff on MS NOW following the commissioners' decision. 

The title of the segment captures her urgency: “‘PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE SAND’: Tarrant County voter after removal of 92 polling sites.” Hawes' larger point was that people outside Tarrant County should not assume this is someone else's problem (MS NOW, 2026).

I think she is right.

The issue before us is bigger than whether one agrees with the political choices Gen Z made in 2024—or which choices young voters make in 2026. Democracy is not meaningful only when citizens vote the way we hope they will.

For educators especially, there is an obligation here that I find difficult to escape. We spend years telling young people that their voices matter. We teach them about citizenship, civil rights, the Constitution, social movements, elections, and the responsibilities accompanying life in a democracy. We encourage them to become informed, question authority, debate ideas, participate in their communities, and vote.

When they decide to take us seriously, the answer cannot be to make participation harder.

That is what worries me about the juxtaposition between these two stories. On one side is a generation that may be becoming more politically engaged than many people realize. Young adults are reconsidering previous choices, questioning both political parties, worrying about affordability and their economic futures, and showing signs that they may turn out in significant numbers this November. 

On the other side, in one of the largest and most politically competitive counties in Texas, voters will find substantially fewer places to cast an Election Day ballot than they had four years ago.

Perhaps what we should be talking about is the troubling contradiction between urging young people to participate in democracy and simultaneously making that participation more difficult.

I remain hopeful about Gen Z—not because I expect young people to think as I do or vote as I might wish, but because I see questioning itself as a democratic virtue. They are watching us. They are watching what institutions do, not simply what leaders say. They are discovering that politics has consequences, and some are reconsidering assumptions formed only a few years ago.

Gen Alpha is watching, too.

What these generations eventually conclude about democracy will depend partly on what they see us doing with it.

If we tell them their voices matter, we should make sure there is a ballot box waiting when they arrive.

References

Armas, M., & Jenkins, S. E. (2026, September 1). Tarrant County commissioners vote to cut election polling sites, CBS Texas. https://www.channel3000.com/news/national-and-world-news/tarrant-county-commissioners-vote-to-cut-election-polling-sites/article_38d3ae73-e40c-5295-bb41-1ba1849f77ba.html

Feldstein, J., Leibowitz, C., & Walker, A. (2026, August 28). Gen Z regrets Trump support and is midterm motivated. The Hill. https://thehill.com/homenews/6056216-gen-z-trump-voter-regret-midterm-clipping/

Lenzen, C. (2026, September 1). Tarrant County removes 92 polling sites ahead of November election, The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/09/01/tarrant-county-removes-polling-sites/

MS NOW. (2026, September 6). ‘PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE SAND’: Tarrant County voter after removal of 92 polling sites [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=552dYGlCoEQ

Smedley, A., & Hamberg, T. (2026, August 25). Anything but apathy: Young Americans digest and dissect politics differently. Navigator Research. https://navigatorresearch.org/anything-but-apathy-young-americans-digest-and-dissect-politics-differently/

Stetkiewicz, S., & Searles, S. (2026, May 20). 49 million young people will be eligible to vote in the 2026 midterms. Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/49-million-young-people-will-be-eligible-vote-2026-midterms

Gen Z regrets Trump support and is midterm motivated

by Joshua Feldstein, Claire Leibowitz and Abigail Walker - 08/28/26 6:00 AM

Thirty-one percent of Generation Zers who voted for President Trump say they regret it, a recent Navigator poll reports.

Millennials followed at 28 percent, with 20 percent of Generation Xers and 10 percent of baby boomers saying they regret backing Trump, too. 

Continue reading here.

Gender-Baiting Is Dehumanizing—And It Hurts Families Across the Political Spectrum, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Gender-Baiting Is Dehumanizing—And It Hurts Families Across the Political Spectrum

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

June 13, 2026

Elaine Godfrey’s Atlantic piece on the Paxton-Talarico Senate race is a sobering reminder that we are likely to see an ugly campaign season in Texas. Already, the attacks on James Talarico have moved beyond policy disagreement into gender-baiting, mockery, and false claims about his identity. These tactics are not only dishonest; they are dehumanizing.

Whatever one thinks of Talarico’s politics, no candidate should be reduced to insults about masculinity, gender identity, or sexuality. This kind of rhetoric does not merely target one public figure. It sends a message to every LGBTQIA perso—and to every young person who is questioning, searching, or simply different—that their dignity is conditional and that their humanity can be turned into a punchline.

That cruelty is especially painful because Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual (LGBTQIA) people are not abstractions. They are our children, siblings, cousins, parents, students, neighbors, colleagues, and friends. They live in Democratic families, Republican families, religious families, secular families, rural families, urban families, and every kind of Texas family. 

Geez, human variation does not sort itself neatly by party, denomination, ZIP code, or ideology. 

That is not “higher education gobbledygook.” It is lived reality.

So when political leaders mock gender identity or use anti-LGBTQIA insinuations to score points, they are almost certainly wounding people in their own communities—and quite possibly in their own families. 

They may imagine they are attacking an opponent, but the damage radiates outward. It reaches the child listening from the back seat, the teenager in the pew, the college student afraid to come home, the parent who loves their child but now feels politically cornered into silence.

Most positively, this moment also reminds us that LGBTQIA people have never been merely the objects of ridicule or fear. They are agents of courage, culture, family, faith, scholarship, public service, and democratic possibility. Every year on June 28, communities around the world observe International LGBT Pride Day, honoring the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City—a watershed moment that helped catalyze the modern gay liberation movement. 

Pride is not only a celebration. It is a public affirmation that people who have been shamed, criminalized, silenced, and excluded are fully human and fully worthy of dignity, safety, joy, and belonging.

Happy Pride Month, by the way!

This is why gender-baiting is so morally bankrupt. It asks us to move backward, toward shame and stigma, precisely when history calls us forward—toward recognition, repair, and love.

This is not strength. It is not faith. It is not leadership. It is the politics of humiliation.

Texas deserves better than campaigns built on ridicule. We can debate taxes, schools, health care, immigration, war, democracy, and the future of the state without stripping people of their dignity. In fact, we must. A democracy worthy of the name depends not only on votes and institutions, but on the moral discipline to recognize one another as fully human.

The truth is simple: LGBTQIA Texans belong to all of us. They are part of every community, including those that pretend otherwise. To attack them for political gain is to attack the sacred fabric of family, faith, and human dignity itself.

Reference

Stonewall riots. (2026, June 12). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

‘We Have Not Seen Ugly Yet’

Paxton versus Talarico is already awful.  

By Elaine Godfrey | May 27, 2026

Mark Felix / Bloomberg / Getty
May 27, 2026

TWO THINGS are as certain as bluebonnets in spring now that Ken Paxton is the Republican nominee for the Senate in Texas: Democrats have a better-than-usual chance of winning statewide. And the next 23 weeks are going to be hideous.

Paxton’s big win comes days after President Trump stuck his finger into the wind, determined that the incumbent, John Cornyn, was toast, and gave the attorney general his last-minute support. Even though the nearly 28-point margin was surprising, it was probably always going to be Paxton. A runoff tends to attract the hardest of the hard-core—the kind of determined voter who is willing not only to show up to vote in March, but to show up and vote in March, sit through 12 weeks of brutal attack ads, then head back out to the polls in May. The kind of Republican who might argue, as one woman did in Dallas when I spoke with her last week, that Paxton and Trump are bringing masculinity back to the party like Bambi’s father “coming out of the forest with those huge antlers.”

Now that these dutiful Republicans have secured the animated stag of their dreams, they will turn their attention to his general-election opponent: James Talarico, the 37-year-old Democratic state lawmaker and aspiring Presbyterian minister. In some ways, the two men have become avatars for their respective parties, which will spend the next five months ruthlessly attacking each other.

Paxton, a MAGA folk hero, seems even more committed to the movement than Trump himself is. As attorney general, he filed dozens upon dozens of lawsuits against Presidents Obama and Biden, and sued to overturn the 2020 election results. Paxton and Trump happen to share a strikingly similar ethical and legal rap sheet: Both men have been indicted (Paxton’s charges involved securities fraud and were dismissed after he agreed to do community service and take an ethics class); both have been impeached (Paxton was suspended by the Texas House but later acquitted by the Senate); and both have been accused of—and deny—infidelity. (Angela Paxton is now divorcing Ken on “biblical grounds.”)

Read: Ken Paxton is actually doing this

Although Talarico doesn’t yet have Paxton’s name recognition, he does have strong youth-pastor energy and, at least for now, the moral high ground. As a faith-forward economic populist, Talarico has a core campaign message of love triumphing over hate, and little guys taking on the billionaires. Republicans know that they’ve got a tough race ahead of them, which is why they’ve already settled on a strategy: make Talarico seem like a weird dude.

Unfortunately for Democrats, Talarico has been more than a little helpful in this effort. In 2021, the state lawmaker said that “God is nonbinary,” a statement that is off-putting to some Christians, not because they believe that God is literally a man but because they can’t fathom why someone would drag God into the earthly debate over gender identity. Talarico has also said that there are six biological sexes and that he supports access to abortion, in part, because God asked for consent when he blessed Mary with the baby Jesus. As a candidate in 2022, he pledged to run a “non-meat campaign,” which was never going to play well in cattle country.

Lately, Talarico has been doing some backtracking. “I know there are two sexes, men and women. I also know there’s a very small percentage of people who have these chromosomal abnormalities, and I believe they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect,” he told CBS this week, adding that there are “some statements that I’ve made that I certainly regret.” Whenever Talarico is accused of being insufficiently pro-meat, his campaign circulates a photo of the candidate gnawing on a turkey leg at the state fair.

Still, both sides have heaps of material to work with. Which is why the next few months promise a total inundation of negative advertising online, and on the airwaves in Texas. Democrats will hammer into voters Paxton’s scandals—and the failures of Republican leadership. “Will Republicans get away with running a superficial attack campaign when Texans are really hurting?” Matt Angle, a state Democratic strategist, told me. “They’ve been in control for 30 years. If something’s broke, they broke it.” Meanwhile, Republicans are already parroting Paxton’s proposed “Tala-freako” and “Low-T Talarico” nicknames. This morning, the Trump adviser Stephen Miller wrote on X that Democrats have nominated their “first transgender senate candidate.” (Talarico is not transgender.) “We have not seen ugly yet,” Vinny Minchillo, a Texas Republican strategist, told me. They’re going to make Talarico “the woke DEI candidate of all woke DEI candidates. And pound him, pound him, pound him.”

The task ahead will be tough for Talarico, who will have to decide when to counter these attacks directly—Define thyself lest ye be defined, as the political maxim goes—and when to remain firmly astride his moral high horse. He will also have to fend off the unprecedented amounts of money that Republicans are pumping into the race in order to protect their fragile Senate majority. Already, Paxton has secured the backing of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which initially endorsed Cornyn and which, last night, dutifully scrubbed its website of all anti-Paxton press releases and ads.

Yet for Talarico, hope remains. No Texan needs reminding that inflation is high, or that the war in Iran has the whole world on edge and gas prices rising. Trump’s polling is bad, and among Texans, Talarico has higher favorability numbers than both Paxton and the president. In what might end up being a particularly good year for Democrats, victory is not only possible but achievable.

Still, if Democrats have done one thing well in Texas over the past 30 years, it’s dash hopes. The last time a Democrat came close to winning statewide in Texas was in 2018. Back then, Senator Ted Cruz beat Beto O’Rourke by roughly 215,000 votes. This time, the figure that Republicans have their eye on is 778,139, or the number of Texans who voted in the March GOP primary but who were not excited enough about either Republican candidate to vote in the runoff. A drop in turnout was expected. But a 36 percent decline “mirrors a lack of Republican enthusiasm we’ve seen in other states,” Minchillo said. For Texas Republicans, that number is “distressing.”

Last night on Truth Social, Trump congratulated Paxton and promised to hold a few rallies to help gin up some excitement. “Texas, this will be FUN!” the president teased. We’ll see.