Why Gen Z Is Embracing Trump
Last week, progressive data guru David Shor gave the Democratic Party a major wakeup call. In an interview with The New York Times‘ Ezra Klein, he carefully explained that the Republican Party under President Donald Trump has benefitted from a massive shift of young people into the GOP column.
Historically, young voters tend to be more liberal than older Americans, and so these GOP gains are quite astounding—particularly among young men. Vice President Kamala Harris actually lost black male 18-year-olds, according to Shor. Overall, voters age 26 and under broke for Trump.
I wrote an op-ed for the New York Post explaining some of the reasons for this shift. One major factor is that Trump has transformed himself from a cable news and reality TV star—a medium of boomer communication—into a figure of the young-male-dominated podcasting universe.
The 2024 Trump campaign correctly surmised that it would need to reach voters who reside outside retirement communities, and that long-form podcast appearances would play to Trump’s strengths and moreover, the key podcasting personalities — Joe Rogan, Theo Von and others — have come to evince a right-wing sensibility, if not exactly conservative politics.
Their vibe is “Barstool conservatism,” a phrase coined by the writer Matthew Walther to describe an ethos that is culturally libertarian — i.e., you won’t find much opposition to gay marriage and abortion in such circles — and yet decidedly Republican in that it is wholly opposed to the hectoring, self-righteous tone of elite progressivism.
And then there’s the fact that the Democratic Party has been in thrall to a cultural vibe that is maximally off-putting to young dudes:
The MeToo movement, the rise of wokeness, and the enforcement of cancel culture identified so
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