Millennials rival Baby Boomers in numbers, but the seniors have a leg up in the political process. WNIJ’s Katie Finlon explores how the issue may hit closer to home.

The New Boom, or the Millennial generation, outnumbers the Baby Boomers, but the Baby Boomers are outvoting them. That’s according to Trey Grayson, who is the director of Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

And the reason why seems to be unclear, if not confusing.

A Reason Foundation poll says young people support big government, but not if it costs more money. They're for smaller government, unless budget cuts do away with a program they've heard of. They want Washington to fix everything, but they don’t want it to run anything.

A millennial, generally speaking, is someone born between 1980 and 2000. With this age group getting the majority of their information from the internet and social media, most argue millennials are the most informed generation to date.

According to a Harvard Institute of Politics poll, however, less than 1 in 4 millennials under age 30 plan to vote in the general elections this year.

But why?

The Harvard poll also found about 59 percent of those under age 30 think elected officials are motivated by selfish reasons, and only 35 percent believe running for office is an honorable thing to do.

Janet Clark is a political science instructor at Kishwaukee College. She thinks the quality of the sources her students find may have something to do with the poll’s findings.

“It seems like there’s just so much out there and they have trouble differentiating between what’s a biased source of information versus what’s really credible.”

Eric Johnson is a political scientist at Kishwaukee College and the DeKalb Township supervisor. He currently teaches a state and local government class and takes real-life examples from this election cycle to teach his students.

Johnson says millennials seem to be apathetic about their role in the political process, thinking that their vote does not matter in Tuesday’s election. He also said the generation appears to be short-sighted with the country’s political issues that might also affect them, like pension and healthcare.

“And I’ve asked, ‘How do you see this election affecting you?’ And they really don’t see it.”

For Northern Illinois University student Joanne Bright, it’s an issue of not having the time to vote between classes, her job and other responsibilities.

“Because I just think it would be really irresponsible to vote unless you really know what you’re voting for, and I don’t have the time between school and work to actually find out about what the candidates are about.”

Otherwise, Bright would vote in this election--in fact, she voted in the last presidential election.

Matt Streb is a political scientist at NIU. He says it’s a matter of political candidates appealing to those who vote, but millennials claim that their concerns and the issues that matter to them--like student debt or the job market--aren’t addressed by politicians.

“It’s kind of a chicken and the egg, right? Students often tell me, ‘Well, politicians don’t talk to me, they don’t talk about issues that I care about, and politicians won’t say this publicly, but what they’ll say privately is, ‘Well, that’s because you don’t vote.’”

Streb says the youth low-voting trend is hardly new. It wasn’t just an all-time high in youth voting for the 2008 presidential election--it was all voting across the board.

“And it is true that in 2008, when President Obama was elected, that young people did turn out in greater numbers than they did previously, but they still made up the same percentage of the electorate that they had made up previously.”

The New Boom’s sense of individualism when it comes to candidates and a lack of party affiliation may play a part in their decision to vote. Evan Walter is a political science doctoral student at NIU and an instructor at Kishwaukee College.

“Millennials like to identify as independents, they like to identify as free thinkers, so they like to not be tied down, and I think that’s kind of just played off on the social mobility side with social media, as they don’t have to be tied down with one source of information.”

Those who are voting in Tuesday’s election can cast their ballots in the DeKalb area in the Conference Room East of the Administration Building in Sycamore.