Vote Compass: What are the priorities for voters of different generations?

Younger and older voters share a top concern this election. But new Vote Compass findings reveal how priorities have shifted since 2023.

For one young Auckland voter, filling the car means cutting back on groceries.

For a pensioner at the petrol station, the pressure is summed up in a few words: “It’s really, really hard.”

Their experiences reflect a concern shared across generations in the latest Vote Compass findings: The cost of living.

But while affordability tops the list for both younger and older participants, comparisons with the last election reveal changes beneath that common ground.

Among those aged 70 and over, cost of living has overtaken healthcare as the leading issue. Among 18- to 25-year-olds, it remains number one – while the environment has slipped down the list.

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A young voter filling up in Auckland told 1News that paying for petrol to get to work meant sacrificing elsewhere.

“More like shopping for myself, like food, being able to get like a full thing of groceries and everything because I have to fill up my car to go to work and everything.”

Nineteen-year-old Daniel said he saw friends struggling on low wages.

“I see like my friends who are working on minimum wage not being able to get by and I reckon it should be increased.”

In Christchurch, another young voter described the difficulty of covering basic expenses.

“Yeah, it’s become a struggle to pay for food, rent and all that.”

Asked whether it was surprising that cost of living led the priorities of both younger and older voters, another replied: “No, it affects everyone.”

The analysis draws on 76,511 Vote Compass responses collected from October 3 to 6, including 6085 participants aged 18–25 and 11,917 aged 70 and over.

Participants were asked: “What issue is most important to you in this election?”

Cost of living accounted for 30.9% of the weighted issue share among younger participants and 25.8% among the older group.

For those aged 70 and over, that represents a change from 2023, when healthcare ranked first and cost of living second.

Cost of living’s share in that group has risen from 15.3% to 25.8%. Healthcare has also increased, from 18.8% to 23.8%, but now sits in second place.

Among younger participants, cost of living remains the leading issue, with its share broadly similar to the 31.8% recorded in 2023.

The environment accounted for 10.8% of younger participants’ weighted issue share in 2023, placing it third.

In the latest findings, that has fallen to 6.7%, putting it fourth behind cost of living, the economy and education.

The comparison shows the environment taking a smaller share of election priorities. It does not establish that younger voters have stopped caring about it, or that cost-of-living pressure caused the decline.

Political scientist and Victoria University of Wellington associate professor Lara Greaves said pressure on household budgets could help explain the shift.

Younger people generally had lower incomes and less access to wealth, she said.

A longstanding question in environmental politics was “at what point does a cost of living just end up too big of an issue that it starts to crowd out the environment”.

Greaves said the findings suggested young people were “perhaps moving away from that environment being so important and moving towards other issues like the cost of living”.

For parties seeking to connect with voters, Greaves said the pressure on everyday budgets presented a challenge.

“That’s a really big challenge for all of our leaders because the reality is, as politicians, they’re all high income earners.

“Some of these people own multiple houses, which is not something a lot of us could dream of.”

Leaders needed to show they understood the circumstances of the people they were asking to support them, she said.

“And so they have to figure out some way that you can connect to the average New Zealander on the street and make them feel like you understand that they need to bring down the cost of living.”

For voters young and old, affordability remains a shared election priority.

Vote Compass is developed by Vox Pop Labs. This analysis uses separate samples from the 2023 and 2026 elections, rather than tracking the same people over time.

The 2023 findings cover September 7 to October 14. The 2026 findings cover October 3 to 6, providing an early snapshot of this campaign.

Responses are weighted to reflect the voting-eligible population across demographic and political characteristics. Open-text answers are grouped into issue themes.

The percentages are weighted issue shares, rather than a simple percentage of people. Where someone names more than one issue, their weight is divided between those issues.

Vote Compass participants are self-selected, rather than randomly sampled, and the findings are subject to uncertainty.

Check out Vote Compass at 1news.co.nz/votecompass.