The rise of Gen Z could foretell the fall of Trumpism
The evidence all points in one direction: Americans born after 1996, known as Generation Z, could doom not only Trumpism but conservatism as the country currently knows it.
Members of Generation Z who are of voting age — 18- to 23-year-olds — want more government solutions. They rank climate change, racism and economic inequality consistently in their top issues, according to polls, and they participated in greater numbers during their first midterm (in 2018) than previous generations did theirs.
As Republicans espouse “family values” and “religious liberty,” data finds that Generation Z, also known as Zoomers, are less likely than older Americans to be a member of a religious group — 4 in 10 don’t affiliate — and appear to care more about systemic racism and an equitable future than upholding traditional nuclear family structures, based on polling of their policy priorities.
To members of Generation Z, who have come of voting age in the past five years, President Donald Trump and Republicanism are one and the same. And most pollsters and experts on voting behavior agree that patterns are developed early — how a person votes in their early years, and the impressions they form from high school into young adulthood, stick with them in one form or another for decades.
Generation Z’s leftward tilt is already impacting the presidential race. A Harvard Youth Poll conducted between Aug. 28 and Sept 9, found Joe Biden’s support at (60 percent) among those aged 18 to 29 — ahead of Hillary Clinton’s (49 percent) in 2016 and Barack Obama’s (59 percent) in 2008.
For now, this generation remains a small part of the electorate. But as more Gen Zers reach voting age, they could force a different kind of conservatism to take root as Republicans compete for their votes, according to a POLITICO study of polling data and interviews with more than 15 experts. Gen Z’s beliefs in diversity, equality and social justice are likely to guide them for decades, pushing the Republican Party to either embrace a more inclusive, possibly libertarian message built around social and economic freedoms or lose with increasing regularity. Though some political prognosticators have viewed aging as a factor that could move younger generations toward Republicans eventually, there’s stronger evidence suggesting the imprint left on a given generation by early political encounters is more indicative of how they’ll vote over their lifetime than changes due to age. [Continue reading…]