The summer before I started college, I attended the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. Among the purchases I made with my meager savings as I navigated through throngs of vendors was a pair of pajama shorts dotted with a constellation of donkeys, fireworks, and the words “Proud To Be A Democrat” emblazoned across the waistband.

According to political scientists, this behavior isn’t surprising given my age, my voter registration status, and what was happening in the United States at that moment in time — literally yards from where I stood.

But in the decade since 2008, younger voters across the ideological spectrum have become more liberal and Generation Z is among the most progressive and diverse in the country’s history. On issues like sexism, racism, homophobia, and bigotry, research suggests that Generation Z has adapted a worldview that embraces more diverse viewpoints. As the country gears up for the 2020 elections, this shift by the Gen Z voters who, along with millennials, outvoted older generations in both the 2016 presidential election and the 2018 midterms, would seem to be a definitive boost for Democrats. But there is another important way Gen Z is setting themselves apart from previous generations and making their mark on 2020.

According to a Pew Research Center report prior to the 2016 election, 50% of young adults self-identified as political independents, although they were much more likely than older generations to hold liberal views on a variety of social and political issues. A poll conducted by the nonpartisan Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) among voters ages 18–24 shortly before the 2018 midterms found that while 56.4% of young people “chose to affiliate with” either the Democratic or Republican political parties, one-third, or 33.1%, identified as Independents — nearly as many as the 35.5% of young people who identified as Democrats and significantly more than the 20.9% who identified as Republicans.

“[Gen Z] is a particularly liberated generation,” Carolyn DeWitt, president and executive director of Rock the Vote, told Teen Vogue. “...They reject labels and putting things in boxes and that tendency isn’t exclusive to politics...They’re rethinking and reimagining systems and institutions and terms and even ideas.”

Even if they aren’t dismissing political parties outright, the country’s youngest voters are approaching the parties with considerable skepticism. According to CIRCLE’s 2018 pre-midterms poll, just 33.7% of young white people age 18–24 believed membership in a political party made their voice more powerful. Black and Latinx youth held slightly more favorable views of party membership than their white counterparts, with 40.6% of Black youth and 40.9% of Latinx youth believing that membership in a political party made their voice more powerful. Among Independents in the CIRCLE poll, only 22.7% expressed trust toward the Democratic Party, while a mere 12.9% expressed trust in the GOP, and distrust toward “party elites” is especially high among young Democrats.

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of CIRCLE, attributes the low levels of trust young people express toward political parties, in part, to the dysfunction that’s plagued American politics in recent years. “Young people today are only seeing this very...polarized world where nothing politically seems to be functioning as it’s supposed to...Older generations at various points in their young life had seen that, at least once or twice— some congressional leaders making a decision together [in] a bipartisan partnership…If you’re somebody that’s younger than 25, you may not have seen that. You may have seen a Supreme Court nominee get beaten down by an opposing party, or some bills not even making it to the floor...And it’s really hard to put [your] trust in that system.” Kawashima-Ginsberg added, “It’s easier, in a way, to dismiss everything surrounding a system that you see as dysfunctional. And political parties are part of that system.”