We will confidently say that Gen Z received much more Republican during the last couple of years, due to a swarm of latest, first-time younger voters — particularly males of all races.
Pre-election polling captured this phenomenon, voter registration tendencies tracked it, and post-election exit polls recommend ballots mirrored it. Add to this a latest report from the Democratic agency Catalist, which has produced among the most definitive analyses of the 2024 election, and also you begin to get a reasonably strong sense that younger voters have shifted laborious towards the Republican Occasion.
Nonetheless, which may elide some nuance inside Gen Z.
The information we now have from the final election suggests, broadly, at the very least two kinds of younger voters: “Outdated Gen Z” — extra Democratic, extra progressive — and “Younger Gen Z” — extra Trump-curious and extra skeptical of the establishment.
That inside cut up, roughly between these aged 18 and 24 within the latter camp and 25 to 29 within the former, hasn’t dissipated post-election; it’s nonetheless displaying up in polling and surveys. No cohort is monolithic, however a mix of things — the pandemic, the rise of smartphones and newer social media, inflation, Trump — appears to be driving a wedge inside Gen Z.
The upshot is that there look like two Gen Zs. And that divide throughout the era definitely complicates the long-held perception that youthful voters are usually extra progressive than older ones — and that Democrats thus have a pure edge with youthful generations.
Politically, there are two Gen Zs
About a 12 months in the past, the Harvard Youth Ballot, a public opinion undertaking from that college’s Institute of Politics that has been recording younger voters’ sentiments for greater than a decade, tracked a serious distinction in the best way voters beneath the age of 30 have been feeling about Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Whereas Biden held a lead of 14 proportion factors amongst adults aged 25 to 29, his lead amongst 18- to 24-year-olds was 10 factors smaller. Assist for Trump was larger among the many youthful a part of this cohort by 5 proportion factors within the March 2024 ballot.
That dynamic remained true even after the Democrats switched to Kamala Harris as their standard-bearer. In the identical ballot performed in September, the youthful half of Gen Z voters continued to lag in its Democratic help in comparison with the older half.
Now, greater than 4 months into the Trump presidency, this dynamic — of Younger Gen Z being extra pleasant to Republicans than Outdated Gen Z — continues to indicate up within the newest Harvard IOP ballot.
For instance, the March 2025 survey discovered that Younger Gen Z holds extra favorable views of Republicans in Congress than Outdated Gen Z; whereas the older cohort disapproves of the GOP by a 35-point margin, the margin for the youthful cohort is 28 factors. Equally, the older cohort disapproves of Trump’s job efficiency extra sharply than the youthful cohort — a 7-point hole on the margins.
The identical survey discovered Trump’s favorability is 5 factors higher with Younger Gen Z than with Outdated Gen Z. And whereas each teams are usually unaffiliated with both occasion, a barely bigger share of Younger Gen Z, 26 % to 23 % for Outdated Gen Z, identifies with the GOP.
Older Gen Z hasn’t seen any slippage in its wariness of Republicans. Throughout all three of these Harvard polls, the share who determine with the Republican Occasion has remained basically unchanged. The one main distinction within the spring ballot is a major shift away from Democrats towards the “impartial” label. Outdated Gen Z’s views of Republicans in Congress have gotten extra constructive — 63 % of them disapprove this spring, in comparison with 76 % of them final 12 months. That stated, these older Gen Z voters’ views of Trump have solely dropped for the reason that fall.
Harvard’s ballot isn’t the one one selecting up this cut up in preferences. Yale College’s youth ballot from April has tracked comparable divisions in political identification and preferences, whereas different non-political polling from the Pew Analysis Middle has tracked inside variations inside Gen Z as effectively.
The ideology of the Gen Zs
When it comes to ideology, the polling is noisier, however reveals indicators of a cut up as effectively.
Harvard’s pre-election polls did monitor larger “conservative” identification charges amongst under-25s than over-25s. Throughout all three 2024 and 2025 Harvard polls, conservative identification is actually unchanged throughout each teams. No matter how every subgroup self-identifies, nonetheless, different polling means that the youngest Zoomers should still maintain extra conservative views than the oldest Zoomers.
In response to the spring Yale Youth Ballot, youthful Gen Z women and men are inclined to have extra Republican-coded opinions than their older Gen Z friends on a variety of coverage points. They have an inclination to view Trump extra favorably, aspect with the Republican place on some insurance policies, like immigration, trans ladies in school sports activities, and Ukraine, by larger margins, and usually tend to think about casting a vote for a generic Republican candidate than older Gen Z.
Youthful Gen Z can also be the section of People the place religiosity appears to be holding regular, if not outright growing. As I’ve reported earlier than, younger Gen Z males are holding on or returning to organized faith in charges excessive sufficient to decelerate a decades-long development towards spiritual dissociation in America.
They’re outpacing older Gen Z and youthful millennial males in figuring out with a faith, per the Pew Analysis Middle’s newest Spiritual Panorama Research. And particularly, amongst all Gen Z born between 2000 and 2006, the next share, 51 %, determine as Christian than they did in 2023, when 45 % stated so.
Elevated religiosity isn’t essentially direct proof of extra conservative thought or Republican affiliation, however there’s a correlation between Republican partisan identification and respondents saying that the function of faith is vital to them or that they determine with a faith in any respect. In different phrases, extra spiritual People are usually extra Republican, or extra conservative.
This cut up might upend future elections
Ought to these tendencies maintain, they are going to pose a problem for each main political events.
The concept of a rising Democratic voters — that youthful, numerous, and extra progressive generations of voters turning into eligible to vote might ship constant victories for Democratic and liberal candidates — seems more and more tenuous, not least after the 2024 elections. The polling since suggests the pro-GOP shift amongst youthful Gen Z-ers is probably not a blip.
However Republicans can have work to do to maintain these good points and to have them work of their occasion’s favor throughout election season. That Younger Gen Z confirmed up for the GOP in 2024 doesn’t assure that they are going to accomplish that once more in subsequent 12 months’s midterms, or the subsequent presidential election.
And quite a bit is at stake. Gen Z will turn into the most important a part of the voters in 2030, and can have the ability to sway elections, if Democrats and Republicans can preserve them engaged.
For now, the information present there could also be one thing sturdy within the cut up that 2024 polling captured: The latest cohort of younger voters, who couldn’t vote in earlier elections, was considerably extra Republican than the oldest younger voters. In 2020, Trump received about 31 % of their vote. In 2024, he received 43 % of their help.
And the 2024 Catalist report means that the shift was pushed by the emergence of a beforehand disengaged, male, and racially numerous youth voters, made up predominantly of newly eligible Younger Gen Z voters. Younger Black and Latino males on this cohort shifted their votes to Trump, and have been a major chunk of latest voters. Was this shift distinctive to Trump and his marketing campaign? Maybe. However what knowledge we do have suggests there is an underlying curiosity or openness towards Republicans among the many youngest cohort of Gen Z — one robust sufficient to cleave this era in two.
