Atlantic: The Myth of the Gen Z Red Wave

[Fiendish Thingy]

https://apple.news/Asogz5mRgQtSlwo9YbSRpCw

(Article might be paywalled)

Good discussion of how available evidence suggests that the shift in youth voting in 2024 was a one-off event and not an ideological realignment. The article challenges the “conventional wisdom” pundits have fed the public via the MSM. My one complaint is the author doesn’t spend much time examining those young voters who abstained from voting and stayed home in 2024, although she does allude to Gen Z’s overall disenchantment with the American system of government.

But voting for a Republican candidate isn’t the same as identifying as conservative. Here is where the CES data cast doubt on the notion that Gen Z is an especially right-leaning generation. According to my analysis of the CES data, young adults have actually become less likely to identify as conservative in surveys during presidential-election years since 2008. The trend is not due to increases in the nonwhite population; fewer white young adults identified as conservative in 2024 (29 percent) than did in 2016 (33 percent).

What about young adults’ positions on specific political issues? For the most part, they are more liberal than previous generations. (No single definition of generational cutoffs exists. In my research and writing, I define the Millennial generation as being born from 1980 to 1994, and Gen Z from 1995 to 2012.) In the 2024 CES survey, 69 percent of young adults supported granting legal status to undocumented immigrants who have not been convicted of felony crimes and who have held jobs and paid taxes for at least three years, up from 58 percent in 2012, the last year all 18-to-29-year-olds were Millennials. Also in the 2024 survey, 63 percent agreed that “generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class,” up from 42 percent in 2012. Support for legal abortion among young adults rose from 46 percent in 2012 to 69 percent in 2024, though the question was worded somewhat differently in those two years. Only one belief shifted in the conservative direction: 62 percent of young adults in 2024 supported increasing border patrols at the U.S.-Mexico border, up from 45 percent in 2012.

The trend looks different if we look at data on partisanship rather than ideology. The Democratic Party has steadily been losing market share among young adults since 2008, mostly because young people have grown likelier to identify as independents; Gen Z is only slightly more Republican than Millennials were at the same age. These young independents tend to vote for Democrats, but, given their lack of party affiliation, their votes are more likely to swing from one election to the next. Indeed, most of the change over the past two elections appears to have been driven by young independent voters breaking for Trump in 2024 when they didn’t in 2020.

Given that young voters have not become more likely to identify as conservative or hold broadly conservative political opinions, Gen Z might not be the disaster for Democrats that Shor and others are predicting. The 2024 election might have been an anomalous event in which young people’s deep dissatisfaction with the economy, especially the inflation that hit their just-starting-out budgets, drove them to want change.

Another distinct possibility is that, going forward, Gen Z will vote for whichever party is not currently in office. Gen Z is a uniquely pessimistic generation. In data I analyzed for my book Generations, Gen Z high-school seniors were more likely than previous generations at the same age to agree with the statements “It is hard for me to hold out much hope for the world” and “I often wonder if there is any real purpose to my life in light of the world situation.” Young Americans today are also unconvinced that their country is anything special: Only 27 percent of high-school seniors think the U.S. system is “still the best in the world,” down from 67 percent in the early 1980s, according to a long-running national survey

This gives a whole new perspective on how best to move forward in strategizing for future elections, and perhaps explains why the approach of hopeful empowerment used by Bernie and AOC has drawn big crowds and resonated so effectively with young people.

[OC375]

1. Interesting

Thanks for posting. I'm an X and Z is a bit of a mystery to me. We seem both similar and different in general generational experiences and attitudes, at least to me.

[EverHopeful]

2. This link is supposed to be non-paywalled

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/gen-z-red-wave/683212/?gift=Dg604QyZ-_9n-X5wEEw47HAEHUPuNDZKv4IuPFUxlNU&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

[Fiendish Thingy]

3. Thanks! Nt

[FakeNoose]

4. Americans 30 and under are getting all their information on their cellphones

Mostly on TikTok and Instagram ... probably a few others. What is the Democratic Party doing about this?
I'm in my 70s and I can't relate to this trend ... but it's definitely real.

[Skittles]

6. ?

I'm guessing it is WAY more than just 'people 30 and under"

[lees1975]

5. Makes it sound like Trump got the majority of Gen Z votes, until you look at the chart and see

he got less than 44% of the male Gen Z vote, which was a shift, but was the highest among the categories. It's not like Democrats "lost" the youth vote, they lost about 10% of it. Enough to make a difference, perhaps, except that their turnout was the lowest of all other age groups and demographics.

So there's a lot of spin in the reporting.