America's youngest voters turn right
America's youngest voters turn right
"A new trend has emerged in American politics: The very youngest voters — 18-to-24-year-olds — say they’re more conservative than the cohort that’s just older,” according to the latest Harvard Youth Poll.
“This new trend — which is true for both genders and emerged only in the last few years — is especially pronounced with men.”
If you didn't know this, you haven't been paying attention. Right wing voices have gone hard at the young male demographic for years now. They've targeted kids in online games and social media, and groomed them for years all with the goal of shaping their world view and by extension, their politics. Lonely young guys looking at people who present themselves as successful, rich, and rolling in women, not giving a fuck about anyone but themselves, telling young boys that they just need to be more sexist and racist and that'll get them laid and make them feel fulfilled. Telling them that the world is wrong and they're not. It's been extremely successful, and all wide out in the open. That's why voices like Andrew Tate made it into the public zeitgeist.
Frankly, it's an absolute failing on all of the left for being completely unable or unwilling to see this or show an alternative world view. Too often, when I hear people talk about young white men's issues, I get crocodile tears from everyone who can't separate them from actual right wing provocateurs.
Don't forget Gamergate.
I think the reason the left doesn't hit back as hard is because it feels sort of strange to do so. It's difficult to acknowledge at the emotional level that we're really back to just fighting for the most fundamental basics of liberty, equality and pursuit of happiness. Especially given how the right co-opted talking about freedom in general a number of years ago. Do we really need to rewind our level of discourse all the way back to the 18th century though?
Well, if those are the principles that are under attack, perhaps we do.
All of this began with Steve Bannon and his WoW guild. I can’t believe how far they’ve taken it.
https://www.thewrap.com/how-world-of-warcraft-propelled-steve-bannon-to-the-white-house/
It doesn't help that men literally cannot complain about their issues online without being called an incel. It's so overused that it's lost all meaning. The left needs to do better for young men than "Shut up women have it worse"
*Obviously women DO have it worse, we just need to work on the messaging.
I may get downvoted for this but I tend to downvote comments that lay everything right wing on boomers/olds. I'm nearly one myself, and most of my RL friends are boomer age lefties. Is Vance old? Is Loomer a boomer? Maga Mike, MTG, Boebert, at most Gen X, are leading the charge, and all the Patriot Front dudes are millennials and gen Z. If it were all boomers only we could just wait for them to die off, but it isn't.
You've identified the problem many see, but what is the solution?
This demographic is notoriously hard to reach and the nature of its age and inexperience leads to having their priorities woefully out of whack and susceptible to shit like Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate to Jordan Peterson. Asking or forcing them to watch Mr. Rogers isn't going to cut it, if you know what I mean.
forcing them to watch Mr. Rogers
Saying the world is wrong is a very easy sell because a ton of society is wrong about a ton of things. Covid, minimum wage, appropriate level of corporate dark pattern prosecution (shoutout to world famous breath of fresh air lina khan).
The normal people need to be more proactive about starting with conservative grievances and exploring them more, because the trail leads straight to the billionaires symbolically, and a captured, subjugated set of laws, protections, and institutions that allow them to ever exist.
Systems thinking with as few big words as possible is good for everybody.
I wonder how much of a role tick tock and youtube could have had on this.
I think it's just the overall tightening of the right wing echo chamber. Yes, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, all create spaces for right-wing chauvinists to capture young men when they are most impressionable and feel least seen.
But also these are dividends from Fox News slowly poisoning discourse and rural communities treating being liberal or left as an immoral betrayal of your kin and kind. For those people, being conservative is seen as being sane and the natural state of things, and no amount of facts or cognitive dissonance can influence those communities to change.
The only way to reverse it is to find a way to prevent those top-down right-wing spaces from engaging in propaganda. But not only is that difficult with the First Amendment, we haven't even politically acknowledged what is happening.
Conservatives still gaslight and play the victims while exerting excessive influence on our discourse. The left continues to treat them with kid gloves, which only emboldens them. So I expect this trend to fully continue.
The left continues to treat them with kid gloves,
This has generally been bothering me. You'll have someone on the far right say like "We should kill the jews", and I say "We should stop that guy. Like, I'm okay with someone doing violence to that nazi" and people are like "whoa whoa whoa we can't have VIOLENCE." So basically the right wing can do and say whatever, but everyone else has to hold themselves to pristine standards and just take it.
"Cops brutalize family and shoot their dog". "Maybe we should fight back." "Whoa whoa whoa violent speech is unacceptable bro." Like, ok, I guess I'll just get shot quietly.
Could be just an extension of conservative indoctrination, getting in at “ground level”. They indoctrinate religion and prejudice. They are trying to make inroads at the local government level like school boards. Why not try to further that MO and go after disaffected young men. Works for jihadists and suicide bombers, it’ll work for the talibangelicals.
I have wondered a similar question… Is the trend that young men who are raised in a republican environment / family / culture aren’t leaving it at the same rate as their predecessors? Or is it that more young men raised in a liberal / apolitical environment are being captured by the right wing internet pipeline?
I would guess that in previous generations, kids are raised about 50/50 to match their parents beliefs (who are roughly 50/50 conservative or liberal) and the significant dominance of liberal youth vote was attributable to kids leaving that ideology behind as they form their own beliefs, reenforced by peer effects. But I’ve wondered if tiktok and other new social dysfunction of current generations has made it easier for kids raised in that 50/50 to just “stay” where they were raised.
Perhaps it could all be explained by the weakening of the ability of peer effects to influence young people’s political beliefs. Young men feel they have more community in online conservative spaces than they do in their more egalitarian real world social environments, so instead of ditching their parents beliefs to match their real world friends they ditch their real world friends that don’t match their beliefs.
Yeah I agree with your assessment
The day Trump flip-flopped on Tik Tok, my wife's feed started to carry humanizing Trump videos. They've since disappeared.
Incel dipshits that couldn’t get laid even if they had a 100 dollar bill sticking out of theirs pants.
Here's the results from that youth poll the Axios article doesn't mention:
The poll also finds:
A significant enthusiasm gap between young Democrats and Republicans, with 74% of young Democrats saying they will "definitely" vote, compared to 60% of young Republicans.
A widening gender gap, nearly doubling from 17 points in the Spring poll to 30 points now, with Harris leading 70% to 23% among likely female voters.
Harris outperforming Trump on key personal qualities and issues, with substantial leads in empathy (+33), relatability (+24), honesty (+22), climate change (+32), abortion (+31), health care (+26), and gun violence prevention (+25) among all young adults.
Harris's job approval as Vice President has significantly improved, increasing from 32% in the Spring poll to 44% now.
Strong support for progressive policies among young Americans, with 74% favoring capping prescription drug prices and 59% supporting a nationwide law to legalize abortion.
Overwhelming rejection of Project 2025 among young Americans, with only 6% viewing it favorably compared to 48% unfavorably. Even among Republicans, we find 14% viewing it favorably and 23% unfavorably.
The impact of social media, with 53% of young adults encountering memes about Harris online in the last month, 34% of whom say it positively influenced their opinion. Conversely, 56% have seen memes about Trump, with 26% reporting a negative impact on their perception.
And yet because of the electoral college, it's still dead even. Factor in the armed citizen (trump supporting) electoral monitors planning to patrol ballots on election day and other vote suppression tactics, disenrollment and other court disenfranchisement tactics, and laws being passed to try to legally not certify a Harris victory, I figure Harris is probably and a 45-55 underdog at the moment.
Young people still don't vote at very high rates. They also tend to be the most likely demographic to say they are a likely voter but then not actually bother to vote. The youth vote is still a problem in this country.
I could be wrong, but I seem to remember that young conservative "likely voters" were much more likely to actually vote, so that muddies some of the clarity here as well.
with Harris leading 70% to 23% among likely female voters.
Shocking, really. If a horse were running for president, and horses could vote, do you know who they would cast their vote for?
Well we didn't see that enthusiasm for Hillary so I have no idea what you're on about.
Also, and I wasn't expecting I'd have to say this today, women aren't horses. Additionally, horses are actually pretty egalitarian with their leadership; that's why they're such good allies for humans, they don't mind being led by a person instead of a horse.
Tl;Dr: every part of your comment is wrong.
Anyone curious about this trend should read this:
Got a non-paywall version?
Firefox and noscript will get you almost any wapo article.
edit: article is worth the read.
Here’s a gifted version, I think it still asks you to login but it’s not paywalled
archive.is exists. Fucking use it.
That was a fantastic read. Thank you for sharing that
Indeed. It articulated a lot of what I've seen since I graduated high school about 20 years ago, and it helps explain the hypnotic allure of toxic shitheads like Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. It also helped me understand a little more about Trumpism and why it's so weirdly intoxicating to people like my father in law and uncles, who really are just sad, old, ugly, many-times-divorced white men with limited education and very little to offer to the rest of society. They're fucking angry, and it was hard to figure out what they were so mad about until I started reading stuff like this. They're completely unmoored and irrelevant, and they're lashing out in what's really a cry for help, even if it's too deep within their subconscious to be actionable.
I'm late to the party here but still wanted to take a moment to thank you for the share - quite an interesting read. Cheers.
Fucking young people never learn until they have a fall. When I was working 50 hours a week at a high paying job that I stumbled into by nothing but sheer dumb luck, I ACTUALLY believed that diligent hard work at a large corporation was the ticket to prosperity and anyone that for some reason couldn't succeed in life that effortlessly was a lazy liberal.
I then lost my job during Trump's presidency and my life never really recovered or got better. Fuck young people that think voting for a fascist is cool and hip. I guess we'll all have a chance to talk some sense into them when we meet in christofascist gulag.
I’d like to know the exact definition of “conservative.” I find it hard to believe that youn people are viewing the widespread woes of late game capitalism thinking “more capitalism will fix this.”
What I’ve seen are young men feeling isolated and lonely then being angry about it. Then they are told by Rogan/petersonesque types that being authoritarian to women as policy will get them an obedient wife.
The bottom paragraph of the article states that they're just as likely to say health care is a right and governments should pay more to help lift people out of poverty. So, there's a disconnect between the identity and actual policy positions which I think is pretty key.
They want more fair capitalism, universal health care and women to know where they belong.
It's not ambiguous to them.
Whatever they believe...
They could say they want M4A, no more billionaires, and our college system to be fixed, then say they're a conservative because Dad said their family is conservative.
When I was in that age bracket, I identified as conservative. Over the years, my positions have become increasingly conservative, and I find myself classified by many as a flaming socialist.
So this isn’t a new thing; people compare themselves to what they consider normal.
I think what it really shows is that it’s less obvious today what the difference between conservative and (what? liberal? progressive?) is. People tend to know more what they aren’t than what they are when they’re young. If they reject something that’s considered liberal, they must be conservative.
I think this is exactly it. For the younger generations, things have shifted leftward, to such a degree that standard issue leftists almost look like they're conservatives.
Wait.. so the boomers aren't the ones who'll take country to dogshit? Now I'm confused - these kids need to get their message straight.
I see this in my purple state amongst my teenage kids peers, and it’s terrifying.
This is not that unexpected. There hasn't been much excitement in the democratic party since 2016 when Sanders movement was stampled. Young voters are still progressive, but there has been no good ringbearer.
Reality check: The youngest age group still appears to favor liberal positions on some issues as much as those ages 25 to 29, Anil Cacodcar, the student chair of the Harvard Youth Poll, noted.
In a poll earlier this year, the younger group was just as likely to say basic health insurance is a human right and government should spend more to reduce poverty.
Good thing they don’t vote!
Axios - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Axios:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/28/gen-z-men-conservative-poll
"We're not going to listen to you because you don't vote."
"Wait! Why are you voting for someone we don't like?"
"What do you mean, 'we should have listened'? We didn't listen because you don't vote!"
This is a dumb take. The artist doesn't listen to the clay when he molds it. This is not about listening. It is about telling.
Impressionable young men being propagandized to. Manipulated to be political about topics they don't understand.
Being fed lies that will hurt them and everyone around them the rest of their lives so someone can get their money and their votes.
They are not tapping these young men's reality. They are creating it.