How Gen Z and Millennials are changing Philippine elections

Your Listening to Puma Podcast. So, you both finally delivered. Of course this is an educated guess because it is not a good example. The only way we can really find out is to have an exit. It is a hard choice because the campus service approves it is the result. That's Dr. Julia Tehanki, professor of political science and international studies at Delasal University. He spoke at an event organized by a German political foundation, Conrad Adenar's Diff Tong on May 16, four days after the 2025 midterm elections. Together with the other experts on the panel, he unpacked the results of the polls in an illuminating and badly needed debrief session. Puma Podcast Chairman and CEO Robbie Alampai moderated the event. In this episode, we bring you insights on young voters and their impact on the elections. I'm Bella Peres-Rubio and you're listening to Teke Tehka. That seems to be a universal narrative for everybody that the youth carry this vote and make themselves heard. What do you say to that? It's presented twice during our voters and the composition of millennials and Gen Z and our current voting population. There is. But for me, characterizing the youth vote as a youth vote has always been homogenous and I haven't always agreed with it. That's Bianca LaCaba, a youth leader and development worker who worked on Senator Bamakino's youth campaign on the ground. Millennials and Gen Zs make up over 60% of the voting population in 2025. That's voters aged 18 to 44. Campus surveys are generally taken as reflective of the voting pattern of this demographic. But Bianca disagrees. People were assuming that the youth vote is going to deliver just because in schools, progressive for the LaCaba better term candidates were doing better. But the youth is not just those who are in school. There are so many Filipino youth who are not in school. Now we cannot homogenize under the youth vote. So the thing right now is we don't have a study for the voting patterns actually of like young people. We can only assume from the turnout because it's a young return out. In the absence of reliable data, Bianca offered this observation drawn from her experience in the campaign. Increased engagement of the youth, young people are not just numbers in the polling. They have taken on a more active role in the elections as a political process. But what I could say at least from our end is there is the youth delivered in terms of participation in the campaign. So one hat that I'm wearing where it is, a young person in the campaign team. So we were like more young people are actually in the campaign team doing more roles that traditionally maybe older people are older people are expected to fulfill. The second hat is the youth organizing. Young people are doing things that are not just about voting. So for example, I've mentioned that our campaigners have also mature. On the local level, I have one story in my vice year. Bianca has never won an election in my vice year even in like 2013, 2019. But this elections, our youth in my vice year, they are organized under the use. Before the elections, they have chapters all over the province to strategically place themselves in preparation for the campaign. They organize themselves under one coalition. The rational being, they don't want other young people to think that they have to be a member of a certain organization before they can come came for a team called back. Now, even them, they are in a local strategy that they engage with their communities. We, before the campaign, you're your started. And they want to go to the high voting population. They did a strategy on how they're going to do their house to house campaign. They're messaging in some areas. They don't want to get agbayan because they're going to get red tag. In some areas, they don't want to go because there is a historical like on this day for the other candidate. And these are things that normally young people are not expected to do because we think that they participate in like politics and the campaign like with so much naïve it. But they strategize and they wouldn't even tell them to do this. I think it's just a realization from the 2012 to campaign. But come the last week of the campaign, they were even asking us, "I'm there, I'm there." And the target is both for Kiko and Bamb. Because for us, they said, "Bamb, at least, I don't know if I'm going to go to the new place." So for us, the target is for him to be at the eighth place. So that's around 30%. So they were saying that so far, we're just going to go to the next level. Of course, it's informal. There are young people who don't have the resources to do it as extensively. But we're going to make it poor. But we're not sure if him being at that spot will make up for all the other votes that probably won't get in other provinces. And they're also thinking about that. They also have to make up for those votes. And then come electricity and the results day, number one, Shazan with Isaiah. And that's because even the youth were chatting, some people were saying, "I'm going to go to the new places, the new places, the new places, the new places, the new places." And some people were saying, "So that we can amplify our efforts and complement the new places." So the question is, "How do they do that?" I cannot confidently say that because there are no studies on that yet, but least from experience. What I know is that there is increased youth participation in ways that it's not just tokenistic. We're not just warm bodies. They're just there for fun. Even the young people are saying no to rallies already, because they know that winning elections is not just about rallies. It's actually doing the work in the ground. So, yeah, so upload the youth for turnout, but it's not yet as I should tell you. We don't have the data yet. We can't actually categorically confidently say that they made the vote for one particular win the part with a progressive mindset. Ask this also, taking note that the youth was number two in the part of this. So, yeah, I said this time and time again. The youth vote is the holy grail of all the votes. The youth vote since the restoration of the necromancy after it has never delivered to a presidential candidate. It has delivered to some senators like maybe a defense officer, or a vote. It's not monolithic. And it delivered to Wong-Bong Mark. It delivered to some of the parties. So, time is in the same way as we have time. These are blocking. But what we notice, and that's why academics and investigative journalists to dig deeper, is that the resurgence of votes, surprisingly, which was not captured by the surveys, or by men, people, even by a client, sell and there is. Some people are not going to be able to do that. And this is where we look into the new information voters. Locals, educational demographics, most of the voters are either high school graduates or still in high school or give not even finish high school. But they're part of the youth. And these are low information voters who have the propensity to vote, but their capacity to. The lack of information. They're not vocal. I am against the vocal candidate. They lack information. And if they are the targets of the fake news standards and gender algorithms. So, how do you address that? More information. How do you address these information? So, you don't support them directly, but they are free. So, please, please, let's not persuade the rest of the family. this election season. I don't know if you're familiar with the concept of H-O-F-L, head of family leader. So in local elections, you find that H-O-F-L, the head of family leader, head of family so Per Household has one person in that house where everybody will defer to put the vote. Usually it's the mother or the father. That's Alan Hermann, a political strategist. So when you ask the children in Filipino, they will either say one of two things. That's the head of the family leader. Sacred for campaign strategists like us because that's the smallest unit and the most reliable. So most reliable. The more micro your campaign is, the better. The better results. This election, I can confidently say that in about, I would say, again anecdotal 80% of the local candidates that I don't want to say handled, but handled, handled. Okay, assisted. The head of the family leader is either Ate or Kuyah. So congratulations to Arun again. So that perception has become Ate or Kuyah knows best, the eldest child because the the eldest child is more tech savvy, is more connected, knows more information, is more involved, no longer mom or dad because they're old poigies who don't who aren't really connected. So that's a good sign that the head of the family leader is now Ate or Kuyah. Despite these positive indicators on the increasing impact of youth and elections, University of the Philippines, the lemon political science professor, Dr. Jean and Sina's Franco still emphasize the need for exit polls in elections to better understand how each demographic votes. Of course, I would be very happy if the nations young people could pull that bomb and keep code to the Senate. However, in the absence of exit polls, it's really difficult to know. And I cannot overemphasize the sayings and the importance of course of exit polls. Why? In my research interest, which is women in politics, I've always been asked, is there a women's vote? I cannot respond to it simply because I don't know. Now, you know, the importance of having sex and each disambulated demographics in election turnout is that somehow, well, this is very ideal, we can sort of chip away the politics of patronage in which each candidate will have to go to the mayor or to go over and or so that they will be what you call this indoors. So that they can go to parallel organizations, which the bank campaign did, but if we know that youths, young people are not really for us or for us, then they can actually tailor their campaign materials, their agenda to respond to the needs of the women, young voters and even senior citizens. So I don't know who we want to fund exit polls in the 20-28 elections, but it should be a regular feature of our election. But what else can young people do to participate in Philippine politics? This is in respect to the timeline, especially this year. We have the upcoming Burangai and SK elections. My point is, for me, at least I'm near exiting you to growing a few years, but in my experience, we should read elections as a culmination of organizing efforts. So that means that right after one elections, you start working for the next elections. So you never stop campaigning, you never stop organizing. So we need to look at what you want to achieve for the next elections. You can just be active like six months before elections because they don't have to be able to campaign to them, you'll be able to convince them. So you need the new new strategy to place themselves at the point where they can influence their communities, their households, their schools, and that is by never stopping in campaigning, in organizing however big or small you want it to be. That's it for today's episode of Tecateca. I'm Bella Peres-Rubio and this episode was written and put together by Tecateca's production team. It was also edited by Anthony Tobias. If you'd like to hear more on the 2025 polls, we previously spoke to Michael Yusinco, a senior research fellow at the Atineo Policy Center for an analysis of the election results. We also have an episode on the opinion of Filipinos on democracy and how that shapes their voting decisions. We'll leave the link in the show notes. For more engaging conversations and insightful discussions, please follow Puma podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.