Is This What Pushed Young Voters To The Right?

For years, the Democratic Party had a firm grip on young voters. But that grip is slipping. More and more, they’re shifting toward the Republican Party—especially in support of Donald Trump. This isn’t just a passing phase; it’s a growing trend.

For decades, America’s young voters have been deeply—and famously—progressive. In 2008, a youthquake sent Barack Obama to the White House. In 2016, voters ages 18 to 29 broke for Hillary Clinton by 18 points. In 2020, they voted for Joe Biden by 24 points. In 2024, Donald Trump closed most of the gap, losing voters under 30 by a 51–47 margin. In one recent CBS poll, Americans under 30 weren’t just evenly split between the parties. They were even more pro-Trump than Boomers over 65.

According to Derek Thompson of The Atlantic. It may have been the pandemic that did it. Now, obviously, since this is The Atlantic, you need to look past the not-so-subtle negative attitude about conservatives and focus on the broader point.

“The pandemic era didn't just demolish faith in scientific and political elites,” explained Thompson on X. “It also strongly increased alone time, sending young men and women in highly gendered social-media spaces, where the youngest men, in particular, seem to have become significantly more anti-feminist and open to right-wing influencers and parties.”

His article goes into more detail.

Pandemics might not initially seem to cash out in any particular political direction. After all, in the spring of 2020, one possible implication of the pandemic seemed to be that it would unite people behind a vision of collective sacrifice—or, at least, collective appreciation for health professionals, or for the effect of vaccines to reduce severe illness among adults. But political science suggests that pandemics are more likely to reduce rather than build trust in scientific authorities. One cross-country analysis published by the Systemic Risk Center at the London School of Economics found that people who experience epidemics between the ages of 18 and 25 have less confidence in their scientific and political leadership. This loss of trust persists for years, even decades, in part because political ideology tends to solidify in a person’s 20s.

[…]

New ideologies are messy to describe and messier still to name. But in a few years, what we’ve grown accustomed to calling Generation Z may reveal itself to contain a subgroup: Generation C, COVID-affected and, for now, strikingly conservative. For this micro-generation of young people in the United States and throughout the West, social media has served as a crucible where several trends have fused together: declining trust in political and scientific authorities, anger about the excesses of feminism and social justice, and a preference for rightward politics.

We may not like his portrayal of conservatives, but the shift in young voters is hard to deny. Is this trend permanent? Nothing in politics is, but the left has clearly lost its grasp on the youth vote. It’s a disaster of their own making, and it’s on the GOP to keep these young voters longterm. Exciting times are ahead, and it’s about time to capitalize on this critical moment.