Analysis: The election is hard to miss. Campaign clips and memes fill our feeds. Artists and musicians are urging people to vote, politicians are turning up at or running community events, and social media is full of explainers about policies and Parliament.
At a Tongan parade in Tāmaki Makaurau over the weekend before enrolment closed, people carried enrolment papers through the crowd. The election has turned up in community spaces as well as on our screens.
But there’s a lot at stake beyond election day. Climate change, secure housing, AI and rising geopolitical tensions — including military expansion — will shape rangatahi’s lives and the world any children they choose to have will grow up in. These challenges won’t be solved in one term. They need commitment across parties and successive governments.
Campaigns, protests and conflicts can take over one person’s feed while barely showing up in someone else’s. What we see depends on who we follow, what we click on and what the platforms keep putting in front of us. So, the election can feel impossible to escape for some people and almost invisible to others.
The deadline has now passed, and anyone who missed it can’t vote in this election. That figure tells us who was enrolled at the time, not who will turn out.
Critics have called the new cutoff voter suppression. The term describes rules or actions that make it harder for eligible people to vote, especially when some groups are more affected than others. However, the Government claims the deadline gives officials more time to process enrolments and count votes.
When asked which MP or candidate best understands young people’s issues, Chlöe Swarbrick came top with 14%, just ahead of Rawiri Waititi on 13%. Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke received 7%, which surprised some people commenting on our poll story. But 14% is still a small share, and no politician really dominated the answers.
Jobs, housing and the cost of living are immediate pressures
A job, food in the fridge and somewhere affordable to live: those everyday needs are behind the issues rangatahi raised in the poll.
Cost of living was identified as the most important issue for young people that could affect the vote, selected by 39 per cent. Jobs followed at 16%, then housing and homelessness at 10%.
Asked what was driving cost-of-living pressure, 36% named groceries and food, while 32% named rent or housing costs.
In a separate question, more than half, 54%, said they had found it difficult to find a job in the past year.
This comes as the national unemployment rate reached 5.6% in the June 2026 quarter, its highest level since 2015. The Government has also added new requirements to Jobseeker Support. Since July 2025, recipients have had to reapply every 26 weeks rather than annually. From November 2, 18- and 19-year-olds without dependent children will also have to pass a Parental Assistance Test to qualify for Jobseeker Support or the equivalent Emergency Benefit.
The Government says the changes are intended to encourage work and target support to those most in need. For rangatahi finding it hard to get a job, these extra requirements come at a difficult time
The 2023 Census estimated that 34,557 Māori were experiencing severe housing deprivation — almost a third of everyone in that category.
For tangata whenua, the struggle to find a safe, stable home is tied to a longer history of land loss and barriers to housing. Wāhine Māori also experience family violence at disproportionately high rates, and housing insecurity can make it harder to leave an unsafe relationship. Women’s Refuge and Shine say some women stay with abusive partners because they can’t afford to leave.
The wider housing crisis has also been in the news this winter, with reports of several people sleeping rough who have died. One was Christchurch woman Hayley Sutherland, who died after being found beneath New Brighton Pier. Later reporting said she had been evicted from her home weeks earlier.
As winter has passed, these deaths can slip out of the headlines, but the housing crisis doesn’t. When the cold lifts, it can become easier to look away.
The poll also found 73% want te reo Māori to be a priority for the next Government. Te Tiriti was named by 7% as an issue likely to influence respondents’ votes, but that doesn’t measure how much they value it.
The Hīkoi mō te Tiriti showed the issue’s wider significance, with tens of thousands gathering at Parliament in 2024 to oppose the Treaty Principles Bill, which was later defeated.
The future rangatahi will inherit is already taking shape
The cost of living and finding work are immediate concerns. Climate change brings the future into the present: 81% of respondents said they were very or somewhat worried about its impact on their generation.
One example is Cyclone Gabrielle. A NIWA-led study found human-caused warming increased the cyclone’s total rainfall by 10%, with extra rain falling during its most intense periods. NIWA research also indicates that tropical cyclones affecting Aotearoa are likely to bring heavier rainfall as the climate warms and may become more intense.
Climate risks are expected to grow during rangatahi’s lifetimes. The IPCC warns that climate impacts can force people from their homes and make existing conflicts worse by putting pressure on livelihoods, resources and safety. That future isn’t inevitable, but it shows why decisions made now matter.
The poll found 58% of rangatahi Māori think the Government isn’t doing enough to prepare them for an AI future. That matters because AI will shape the work available to them and the world, they inherit — including through data centres’ demand for energy and water.
Warnings that advanced AI could escape human control, even threaten human survival, are contested; but AI is built and deployed by people, so choices about safeguards and regulation matter.
The poll can’t tell us who will turn out, or whether these issues will decide anyone’s vote. But it shows rangatahi thinking about what affects them now and what kind of future they want. Politicians may change after the election. Those pressures won’t disappear with them.
