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OTTAWA — When Canadians next go to the polls to pick a prime minister, in the fall of 2019, the youngest of the millennial generation will have reached voting age.

Not only that, but millennials — defined in this instance as those born between 1980 and 2000 —will form the single largest pool of potential voters while baby boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — will, for the first time in decades, no longer be the largest generational cohort going to the polls.

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This demographic sea-change is already changing politics on both sides of the border and the “millennial effect” is almost certain to be amplified in Canada in the coming years.

A growing body of academic and polling research shows that millennials think about politics and react to politicians in profoundly different ways than their Boomer grandparents or Gen-X parents.

Judging by last fall’s federal election results, the federal Liberals, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in particular, appear to be the ones, in this country, that first tapped what pollster David Coletto calls this “electoral superpower.”