Four-times-indicted former president Donald Trump has been successfully selling white Christian nostalgia, racism and xenophobia to his base. However, the Public Religion Research Institute’s massive poll of 6,616 participants suggests that what works with his base might pose an insurmountable problem with Gen Z teens and Gen Z adults (who are younger than 25).
Demographically, this cohort of voters bears little resemblance to Trump’s older, whiter, more religious followers. “In addition to being the most racially and ethnically diverse generation in our nation’s history, Gen Z adults also identify as LGBTQ at much higher rates than older Americans,” the PRRI poll found. “Like millennials, Gen Zers are also less likely than older generations to affiliate with an established religion.”
Those characteristics suggest Gen Z will favor a progressive message that incorporates diversity and opposes government imposition of religious views. Indeed, “Gen Z adults (21%) are less likely than all generational groups except millennials (21%) to identify as Republican.” Though 36 percent of Gen Z adults identify as Democrats, their teenage counterparts are more likely to be independents (51 percent) than older generations.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“In addition to being the most racially and ethnically diverse generation in our nation’s history, Gen Z adults also identify as LGBTQ at much higher rates than older Americans,” the PRRI poll found.
All this suggests younger voters are eager to put use their time and money in furtherance of their values — on- and off-line: “Gen Z adults are notably more likely than older generations to have volunteered for a group or cause (30% vs. 24% or less) or attended a public rally or demonstration in person (15% vs. 8% or less).”
None of this is good news for a Republican Party whose base tries to eradicate the division between church and state, wants to ban abortion, targets LGBTQ youths, dismisses climate change as a hoax and opposes race-based affirmative and student loan forgiveness.
In that regard, sending Kamala Harris, the first Black and first female vice president, to college campuses to talk about guns, abortion, the environment and other issues looks like a smart move.
(Harris’s message that voters’ “freedom” is at stake provides a helpful contrast to a party wanting to impose its religious views on the rest of us.)
If younger voters come to see 2024 as a battle for an inclusive and free America, not merely another partisan election, perhaps they will turn out in great enough numbers to defeat the MAGA threat.
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Some additional interesting points in the cited poll report:
- Gen Z adults trend slightly less Republican than older Americans. More than half of Gen Z teens do not identify with a major party, but most share their parents’ party affiliation.
- Gen Z adults are more liberal than older Americans. Gen Z teens are more moderate.
- Gen Z is more religiously diverse than older generations. Gen Z teens mirror their parents’ religious affiliation. Gen Z teens are more likely than Gen Z adults to attend church or find religion important.
- Most Gen Z Americans, particularly Gen Z Democrats, are more likely than older Americans to believe that generational change in political leadership is necessary to solve the country’s problems. Younger and older generations both express a lack of understanding across generational lines.
It bothers me that younger Gen Zs find religion more important than older Gen Zs. I’d hate to see all that progress in abandoning religion reversed.
If the demarcation point is adulthood, it seems reasonable to believe the “younger gen z attend church or think religion is important” probably shows more that their parents make them go than anything.
Hmmm that’s a good point, and I hope you’re right. I just shudder to think that all the conservative Prager U and “He Gets Us” indoctrination and propaganda might be working.
I’m a xennial, but I went from being more into religion than my parents, getting people to come get me and take me to church until I had a car and more, to Atheist (with a weird neopagan interlude in my early 20s). Both sets of my parents, on the other hand, swung back more to religion to some degree or another (though both have at least one parent that is more into what they think the Bible says vs what it actually does).
Those Gen Z teens will look more like the Gen Z adults when they themselves become adults. They are being influenced by their parents. But religiosity has been and is continuing to collapse, basically everywhere. :)
To clarify, there are a set of rules in your head that you attribute to a religious figure, that you expect the rest of society to follow because doing otherwise hurts your snowflake feelings.
That’s a rather psychopathic view of the world, and I pity you for it
And what evidence can you provide to support these claims?
Religion seems to be common in humans at least for the last few thousand years as evidenced by archaeological study of many past civilizations. I’m not really familiar with anything prior to Mesopotamia so I can’t speak to that.
With the advent of science and reason, humans have come to learn far more reliable ways of acquiring knowledge than those that lead to religious traditions. Thus, it stands to reason that, as more people come to understand scientific thinking, they would be more likely to question and reject beliefs that aren’t based on sound evidence.
Religion has done some serious harm to a lot of people. It’s natural this would lead to some radicalization. I am personally in favor putting religious trauma in the DSM. Something about my religious leaders advocating electroshock torture to ‘cure’ homosexuality left a bad taste in my mouth.
More gen z identify as LGBTQ+ than Rebulican. Should add that to the list.
Enigmatically we have LGBTQ+ Republicans, and a lot of them, so that doesn’t help us.
They’re like the ‘Jews for Hitler’ party.
I want this to be true with every being of my body. BUT….they’ve been saying this for years about each generation.
Same. I’m nearly 40, and I’ve been hearing this since before I could vote, and yet the GOP hasn’t been voted out of existence. If it were up to me they’d be purged from every position of power nationwide.
There were/are a lot of olds. They have dominated politics for a long time and have also not died due to being the first people to take advantage of modern medicine.
Republicans are doing a lot to hold on to power. There’s multiple states where they control the courts and legislature but can’t win a statewide office to save their life anymore. Which brings obvious questions about what the hell kind of elections they’re running. It’s also why they’re pushing for a SCOTUS ruling to make legislatures the only state governing body that matters.
Young people are generally far less likely to vote, so which way they vote is somewhat irrelevant.
But Gen Z did have a higher turnout in 2022 than prior generations.
So it be smart to go listen to try and not only keep them at the table, to offer more chairs too.
Headline aside, 28% turnout for genz vs 23% for millenials, genx, and boomers in their respective first midterms is not going to swing an election where current boomers turn out 70% and genx turn out 60.
“they” are the same people who control politics and have ensured that the balance isn’t disrupted, please grow to realise this, it is not natural for humans to be divided down the middle over how to follow natural law
What the fuck are you going on about? Also they in fucken qoutes, smells like 4Chan JQ trite. Also natural law? Like fucken gravity, or are ya vague posten about trans folks. Ya know what it doesnt matter, your entire comment read like a damned dog whistle and I am satisfied pointen it out.
If ya can give a reasonable explanation please do. If not piss off.
stop using full grammar when you can’t even type correctly half the time, you need to establish a firm grasp upon the logic with which the world exists in to understand that most things pushed nowadays aren’t correct, i suggest you exercise your mind by means of theorising about concepts rather than jumping upon a wish to “see sources”, because the sources are invented by those who want to keep you from your own mind :)
They were record years for voter turnout in general. So youth turnout, though improved from previous years, was still less than turnout of older generations.
Can’t imagine why that would be. Boomers elected the whitest, oldest, boomerest candidate running in the 2020 primaries. Don’t these young people know a compromise when they see it?? /s
Oh moron. “Natural law” is what we choose to follow. I will have more, and smarter, children than your coal-eating boiled oat flesh can create.
Your last grasp at relevance is by proclaiming thought as absurd, yet you use the very tools we all built and agreed upon to visit absurdity upon us, your fellow caretakers.
You will be forgotten, and echoes of your damaged code depriving your one or two generations of progeny of happiness for as you watch.
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Misinformation. Both parties are not the same and votes ARE counted. A Clinton/Biden Supreme court would NEVER have elimimated Roe.
you’re incorrect and you fall rather easily into the trap of genuinely believing that democracy exists, especially in america, one of the nations with the longest list of known (and unknown) human rights violations in history
Oh, I’m not arguing that at all. I’m saying that when it comes to many issues, both sides are NOT the same.
Democrats aren’t trying to take away health care rights. Republicans are.
Republicans aren’t trying to take away gun rights, Democrats are.
Are both sides servicing corporate masters? Sure they are, but that doesn’t make them the same corporate masters.
This is best explained, honest to god, by an Eddie Murphy movie of all things:
If we can actually get them to vote.
Looking good so far!
It’s really an incredible data point. I am the king of the youth vote skeptics but, 2022 was a great year for young voters. I am cautiously optimistic that a generation of regular voters is coming of age. Most of what is wrong with our democracy can be helped greatly by broader engagement and participation. So much of the bullshit only works because nobody can be bothered to show up to vote for any office other than the president.
My mom was saying how ridiculous it was to think of lowering the voting age to 16.
I said we don’t seem to have a problem with requiring them to become parents at that age, so I fail to see the issue. If you’re okay with forced-birth initiatives, how can you oppose voting?
The common refrain I hear from older voters is that 16 and 17 year olds age idiots and don’t understand the world. There are a lot of problems with this argument. Among them:
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1 or 2 years at that age does not magically result in most people becoming world-wise and informed. Many 16 and 17 year olds have just as good a grasp on voting factors as 18 year olds.
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Like anything, perspective, awareness, and seeing both the bigger picture and the nuanced details often comes at very different times for very different people. To disenfranchise all 16 and 17 year olds just because a minority might be immature in grossly unfair.
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Plenty of the older people who argue 16/17 year olds are clueless idiots, and the same people who keep voting for objectively horrible politicians, who blindly follow a political party like it’s a sports team, and who vote against their own interests due to gullibly lapping up flagrantly bias and false ‘news’. Their judgement is seriously flawed.
As a Gen-Xer I say let the 16 and 17 year olds vote too. Their voices should be heard.
I think a lot of young teens will just vote how their parents tell them unfortunately. And we’re breeding dumber and dumber kids by cutting education anyway possible in Southern states, so they’ll just pile on the maga wagon
