Gen Z has shifted to the political right. Will it last?
A panel at Harvard discusses what drew younger voters to Trump
Young people are drawn to rebellion, and politics is no exception.
For Gen Z voters, it’s the spirit of “juvenile rebelliousness” that has pushed them toward the political right in recent years, said Evan Doerr, who leads the Conservative Coalition at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics.
This impulse was channeled in the anti-establishment politics of President Donald Trump, Doerr said, and has fueled a shift rightward among younger voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections.
“I read 2024 as less of an anomaly but more of an inflection point,” said Doerr, speaking on a panel at Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation on Oct. 14 that examined the shift among Gen Z voters, especially young men, toward the political right.
According to Doerr, many young people felt shut out of opportunities their parents had, such as buying a home or building stable careers. Combined with the broader cultural climate, that frustration ignited a rebellion against what Doerr called “progressive orthodoxy.”
“I don’t know if it was so much great affection for the youth for Donald Trump, who was certainly a charismatic president, as much as it was exhaustion with what had sort of become the establishment,” said Doerr, who spoke alongside Micah English, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Yale University, and Dakota Hall, executive director for Alliance for Youth Action.
Young voters for Trump in 2024
Overall, Gen Z voter turnout declined in 2024. Voter participation among the youngest group dropped to 47% from 50% in 2020, according to a report from Harvard Kennedy School titled “The 2024 Presidential Election: The Broken Bond Between Youth and Democracy.”
Among those who did vote, Trump captured at least half of the under-20 vote across nearly all racial and gender groups, with the exception of women of color, who largely supported Kamala Harris, according to Blue Rose Research.
Young voters favored Harris over Trump by just four points — a stark contrast to 2020, when they backed Joe Biden by 25 points. The shift marked the strongest performance for a Republican among young voters since 2008, driven largely by young white men, according to a study from Tufts University.
Whether those attitudes will endure remains unclear. An NBC News poll conducted in August found that 64% of Gen Z adults disapprove of Trump’s job performance, while 36% approve. The survey, which included nearly 3,000 respondents ages 18 to 29, also showed a sharp gender divide: men were roughly split, but 74% of women disapproved of Trump and just 26% approved of the current president.
Why, then, have the promises of the right resonated with some in Gen Z — and is this rightward shift here to stay?
Anti-establishment current
Leading up to the 2024 election, what Doerr referred to as progressive culture has seeped into academia, Hollywood, and the corporate world, becoming “mainstream,” he explained. Many young voters found the Biden administration “stale,” and uncertainty about the future made younger voters “ripe” for a kind of rebellion against what’s become the “establishment.”
The left’s cultural messaging, speakers noted, also failed to resonate with young men, who turned out for Trump in record numbers.
“I think broadly the Democratic Party’s vision for men has been — be more like women,” Doerr said. “I think that’s really been the cultural message there.”
Many felt alienated by cultural movements that labeled them as weak or representatives of the patriarchy, and values often associated with masculinity, such as risk-taking and providing for one’s family, drew men toward conservatism.
Hall, of Alliance for Youth Action, noted that the appeal of the populist message among youth has resonated across party lines — from Trump’s promises to disrupt the economic system and address working-class concerns on the right to New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who has centered his campaign on issues of economic security and affordability.
“I think that this anti-establishment trend has really been driving politics for longer than we’ve acknowledged,” said English, pointing to the same spirit that fueled Barack Obama’s early campaigns and now animates figures like Mamdani. “And it’s going to continue to, and the Democratic party ignores that at their peril.”
With growing dissatisfaction over issues like government spending and military pay, Hall believes Democrats could have a strong chance in the upcoming 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential elections.
How Gen Z consumes news
Gen Z’s political views are increasingly shaped by algorithms and influencers.
Young people are no longer getting information from civic organizations, community groups or even newspapers, said English, but from social media personalities.
“The right is just way more coordinated and they’re getting their information out and their messages out in a way that they just are not on the left,” English said.
Members of Gen Z are consuming narratives as opposed to news, according to Hall. Instead of reading the facts of the events, they jump straight to the commentary of their favorite influencer, who is more of a “narrative builder” rather than a journalist, he said.
Economic and social uncertainty has led young men to embrace the “politics of grievance” and “politics of masculinity,” English said. “Young men have a lot of anxiety and questions about how gender works now and how they’re supposed to assert their place in the world.”
Young women, by contrast, tend to respond to instability with a “politics of care,” emphasizing empathy, community and collective action, English said.
Algorithms reinforce this split. Young men are often pushed toward “pro-masculinity” and “anti-woke manosphere” content, while young women encounter videos about feminism and reproductive rights.
“So young men and young women are just operating in completely different political worlds,” according to English.
Groups like Turning Point USA, led by Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September at Utah Valley University, have cultivated strong relationships with young men, speakers said, fostering a real-life connection and community.
To regain traction, Democrats would need to connect with young men more authentically, especially men of color, Hall added. That means moving beyond single-issue appeals around criminal justice or immigration and centering the message on financial security and men’s roles as caregivers and providers:
“Yes, they care about health care. Yes, they care about climate,” Hall said. “But overwhelmingly, most young men are talking about what it means to start a family, lead a family, and the economic challenges that they’re facing.”
Men and economic security
A recent poll by NBC that asked Gen Z voters to rank 13 life priorities for a successful life has revealed another divide that’s playing into Gen Z’s shift to the right.
Among Trump-supporting Gen Z men in 2024, having children was the top priority, while it ranked much lower for other groups: 10th for Harris-supporting men and 12th for Harris-supporting women.
Because Republicans are having more children than Democrats, and because families often shape political beliefs, this can lead to more children being raised in conservative households and potentially becoming conservative voters in the future, Doerr noted.
For many left-leaning women, however, starting a family feels less like a path to stability than an additional source of economic and social vulnerability, said English.
Looking ahead, Gen Z’s political direction may hinge on how the Democratic Party responds. If Democrats stick to establishment politics and double down on protecting traditional institutions, young people may continue drifting toward Republicans, said English.
But if the party upends its ties to institutions, similar to how Republicans have done under Trump, the political landscape could shift.
“It really depends on how the parties behave in the next couple of years,” she said.