Young voters in the minority
Climate is the main theme in this year’s elections, especially for young voters. However, they represent only a small percentage of the German electorate: only 14 percent of eligible voters are under 29, while nearly 40 percent are over 60. This is one of the reasons Angela (71) and Angelica (66) are there. Today too. “It is precisely because we are the older voters that are in the majority that we have to show solidarity with the young,” Angela says. “Life is not about more and more and more.”
Angelica adds that a demonstration like this shows great intergenerational solidarity: “In politics, everyone is only interested in contradictions. But here are many different people who only want one thing: work together to do more for a better climate.”
According to Klaus Hurlmann, Professor of Sociology at the Hertie School of Government in Berlin, you can see exactly the political influence young people have here: “As voters, they may be a bit underrepresented in number, but they do so with their idealism has a political impact on the kitchen table. “They talk to their parents and grandparents, and they take that to the polls. Otherwise, the Greens will not double their seats in the Bundestag at the polls now.”
Somewhere in the large field in front of the Reichstag building, Ulrich – in her mid-thirties – is standing with her two young children. “I think it’s important for my children, no matter how young they are, to see that we have to stand up for the climate. There is only one Earth, and we have no alternative,” she says.
