Meet N.J.’s newest voters: the youngest members of Gen Z.

Devanshi Patel did not vote in the first election she was old enough for.
The 20-year-old Rutgers University student said she “didn’t really know the importance of local elections” at the time. But she’s definitely voting in this year’s presidential election, the first time she’ll be able to cast her ballot for the highest office in the country.
Patel is one of 322,988 New Jersey voters who turned 18 between the 2020 and 2024 elections. Together, Patel and her peers make up just under 5% of New Jersey’s electorate. They’re some of the youngest members of “Gen Z,” the demographic born between the final years of the 1990s and the early 2010s.