Hours before the polls closed on Monday, it was still unclear which way the election would go and what it would mean for young Canadians. But one thing was crystal clear to University of Toronto graduate student Momina Habib: that millennial and Gen Z voters could no longer be ignored.

“I feel like this election cycle in itself has shown that young people really do care,” Habib, 23, said.

Voters aged 38 and under made up the largest voting bloc in this election at 37 per cent, according to Abacus Data. Although voter turnout among this group isn’t typically as strong as it is with older generations, there was a jump in participation in the 2015 federal election that many attributed to support for Justin Trudeau. This year, young voters had been cautiously optimistic that their voices would make a difference.

In 2015, participation from voters aged 18 to 24 went up by 18.3 percentage points from 2011, to 57.1 per cent, while 57.4 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds turned out, up 12.3 percentage points. This year, through Elections Canada’s expanded Vote on Campus initiative that ran from Oct. 5 to 9, 111,300 people voted, compared to 70,000 in the smaller-scale 2015 pilot.

“We are the largest cohort that’s voting in this election, so I really hope it makes a difference and it shows in the polls at least,” Habib said.

The outcome she was hoping for was a government that would progressive action on issues such as climate change, better redistribution of wealth and election reform to end first-past-the-post.

Young people are more likely to hold progressive views than older generations, according to experts and recent polls. Like Habib, Ryerson University student Mathieu Dupuis Landry hoped young voters would turn out in large numbers to effect the type of change he wished to see.

“It’s the first time that the younger population outweighs the baby boomers, which have, in the past, swayed to the right or centre-right of the vote. I think with the younger generation, they’ll lean more to the left or left-centre,” Landry, 20, said.

His friend Sarah Ibrahim, 20, thought that could be a real possibility.

“From what I’ve seen and how people are talking about it, especially on social media within the youth, it looks pretty promising for our voices being heard,” she said. “In past elections, people who were our age four years ago, they weren’t as keen or as interested as we are today.”

Ryerson social work student Sarah Gibson, 19, was nervous about whether youth would show up to the polls.

“It’s hard because the reality is that young people are not voting enough,” she said. “I do feel like there will be a bigger turnout this year, but it’s still scary to think that the older populations tend to have more of a control on who gets elected, which doesn’t favour who I think youth need to be elected, especially students and those on programs like OSAP.”

For many young people, the idea of a minority government, which appeared the likely scenario in Monday night’s election, seemed like the best option, a way to get more voices heard.

Kyle Harms, a 28-year-old marketing professional who lives in Burnaby South, where NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was running, said he is a Liberal supporter but curious about how a minority Liberal government could work, similar to the NDP minority provincial government in B.C., supported by the Green Party.

“I think the government here has been able to get a lot accomplished. And so I think that hopefully being able to force parties to work together can be a benefit for Canada,” Harms said.

Meanwhile, the next generation of voters, not yet legal to vote this year, made their choice for a minority Liberal government, according to mock election results from Student Vote, an initiative from non-partisan charity CIVIX, which tallied votes from 1.1 million elementary and secondary school students across Canada.

The program, supported by Elections Canada, supplied 7,747 schools in all 338 federal ridings with authentic election materials to hold mock elections in an effort to encourage voting habits for when the students grow up.

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The Liberal Party took 22.3 per cent of the popular vote and won 109 seats, while the NDP won 98 seats, with 24.8 per cent of the popular vote. The Conservatives won 94 seats with 25 per cent of the popular vote, and the Green Party secured 28 seats with 18.2 per cent of the popular vote. The Bloc Québécois won 9 seats.

Regionally, one of the three progressive parties fared best in all provinces and territories except in Alberta and Saskatchewan, which elected 30 and 11 Conservative MPs out of 34 and 14 seats, respectively.