The numbers are in: Young voters will dominate the 2024 ballots.

Around 114 million Indonesians eligible to vote next year are under 40. Of that number, more than 68 million are millennials, born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s. The remaining 46 million are members of so-called Generation Z, born between the mid-1990s to the first decade of this millennium, with some even first-time voters.

The 2024 general election won't be the first in which young Indonesians outnumber voters above 40, but it will be the first time we will see a greater number of Gen Zers, a demographic group widely seen as politically apathetic.

Data from the United States helps to illustrate this perceived apathy: only 27 percent of people aged 18 to 29 cast their ballots in the last US midterm elections in November 2022.

This could spell trouble for political parties, which now have a herculean task in wooing young voters. But it’s not a mission impossible if the parties only know how to achieve this.

Most, if not all, political parties have said they will put young people and first-time voters at the core of their 2024 campaigns, though none have any concrete programs yet. Some parties have even “recruited” politicians who are popular with youth, like Ridwan Kamil of the Golkar Party and Sandiaga Uno of the United Development Party (PPP), to lead their campaign teams.

Others have gone further by rebranding themselves as youth-oriented and inclusive. These include the National Mandate Party (PAN), which has made an effort to shed its Islamic veneer and shift to nationalist rhetoric. And, as expected, the party also has turned to campaigning on social media, its members singing and dancing on Instagram and TikTok.

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