Today, Explained - The politics of Gen Z

Episode Date: August 29, 2026

What’s up with the kids these days? We asked a Gen Z researcher to explain her generation’s politics.  This show was edited by Kasia Broussalian, fact checked by Esther Gim, mixed by Shannon Mahoney, video edited by Christopher Snyder, and hosted by Astead Herndon. An attendee wears a Vote hair accessory during a debate watch party with the Miami-Dade Young Democrats. Photo by Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images Read more about Gen Z: The Up and Up: https://www.theupandup.us/  You can also watch this episode on youtube.com/vox. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Like any good millennial, I have a love-hate relationship with Gen Z. I love that they're rethinking the rules of work and culture. I love that they love-wired headphones. Gen Z trendsetters are making the old technology the must-have accessory this fall. I love that they're healthier than other generations. But there's also some things I just don't understand about them. They wear millennial styles and listen to millennial music, but they hate millennials? They weirdly hate every sex scene in a movie, and they hate the laughing emoji, too?

Regardless of how you feel about Gen Z, it's undeniable that younger voters are changing the national political scene more and more every year. And in particular, it's their political independence, their unwillingness to define themselves by Democrat or Republican that's different than generations prior. We heard some of this at Trump's UFC fight in Washington, D.C. We don't care what side it is. It's just whoever has, you know, whoever's put in America first, whoever's got, you know, the priority.

You're saying the votes up to grabs, it's up for them to earn it. But the difference comes through even more clearly in the data. This generation doesn't think about politics like the ones prior. So what is going on with the kids? I think the biggest misconception about Genzi's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialist. That is just not the case. Yeah, yeah.

They are embracing candidates who are offering new bold ideas in the absence of those ideas from establishment Democrats. This week on America, actually, Gen Z researcher, Rachel Jan Faza, joins us to separate Gen Z fact versus fiction. Let's dig in. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, joined thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk.

Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk. 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Hear that? It's your money calling. It wants a promotion. Elevate your savings with the Scotia high-interest savings account. Always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest. Conditions apply. Visit Scotiabank.com slash h-I-SA to learn more. Scotia Bank, you're richer than you think. This week, I wanted to dig into the numbers to get a more accurate and nuanced understanding

of Gen Z, a diverse generation that will play a big part in shaping our post-Trump future. And to do that, I partnered with Murmiration, a national firm that conducts a lot of in-depth surveys with a particular focus on young people. And after digging through their data, there's three things that's. stuck out most clearly when it comes to Americans under the age of 30. One, this generation is fiercely independent. When presented with a list of common political labels like Democratic Socialists or liberal, moderate, even America First, the most common response for young Americans was none of the

above. Almost 30% shows that option when we're talking about Americans under the age of 30 years old. Second, this is a generation deeply shaped by their economic and social anxiety. Murmuration found that only 28% of people 18 to 30 say that they can cover an unexpected expense of $500 using cash or savings. The third thing that stuck out in the data was the gender divide among Gen Z men and Gen Z women. There was a 17-point gap between Gen Z men and Gen Z women when it came to supporting the Democratic candidate in the 2024 election.

It was the biggest gender gap of any age cohort. and memoration found that young men are twice as likely than young women to view Donald Trump favorably. But that's just the top line numbers. So I wanted to talk to someone who understands Gen Z voters intimately, and it can help explain the why behind some of the trends we're seeing. So I hit up Rachel Jamfaza, who started a research firm called The Up and Up, all focused on Gen Z voters. She's written here at Vox, and I love the work she does to understand what can be a

misunderstood group. Here's our conversation. Rachel, thank you so much for joining us. I've wanted to have you on the show for a while. I appreciate you coming in. Thanks for having me, Estad. I'm excited to be here. We are going to dig into the data around Gen Z and truly try to understand what I think is a generation that's been kind of misunderstood maybe or at least put into some boxes. I have a little bit of sympathy for them because I remember all the stories about millennials and avocado toast and all of those complaints. But it feels like we've now entered a

into an air where we talk a lot about Gen Z, but really to them. You do work where you do focus groups surrounding young voters. How did you get into that? So I started covering young voters, youth political culture, youth culture in general when I was in college, and was freelancing during college, wrote my senior thesis on the role of social media and youth-led social movements from 2010 to 2020, handed it in literally the day that the pandemic started. And so everything that I wrote about was outdated the second I turned it in. But that was my start really focusing on young people and youth culture. And it was because I was living through the first four years of Trump's first term in office as a college student watching the activism on the part of all the students around me

and across the country and really just felt like my generation was engaging with politics differently than past generations, in part because of social media, but also because of a different proximity to and relationship to authority. And that's only multiplied since then. Yeah, that's become really clear. And that moment in time marks an important delineation in a lot of our lives, I think, particularly in Gen Z. You've done a lot of work around the different Gen Z.

I've read you talk about Gen Z one versus Gen Z two. How would we describe those differences? So I call this the theory of the two Gen Zs. I really started to cultivate it doing focus groups with young people in 2022, hearing the way that high school students at the time and college students at the time just had a different outlook. And I realized that those who had graduated high school before the start of the pandemic, those Gen Z years, just had a different worldview than the younger half of Gen Z who was still in high school at the time that the pandemic hit. And I think the reason that is is because of the taste of independence that people on the older cusp of Gen Z had prior to a lockdown situation.

And so really the age cut off now is anyone who is, is between roughly 29 and 22, I would say, is Gen Z 1.0. And anyone younger than that would be Gen Z 2.0. And there's no official end date to Gen Z right now. Like, it's sort of 1997 to 2012. So it's not very clear yet. Usually, yeah, when the Gen Alpha marker comes in. It's interesting because in some ways that feels intuitive, like, you know, folks change as

they get older. But you're mentioning, like, a important line of demarcation being when. the pandemic hit. But can you just name for me what the difference was between the generations? Like I get that there are different experiences, but how did that shape a different form of politics? Totally. Okay. So Gen Z1.0 really came of age during Trump's first term in office. This was a new phenomenon. He was breaking down past barriers. And we saw a lot of youth had activism in response to actions or in action from the first Trump administration. So you saw things like the March for lives and climate strikes and the Black Lives Matter movement. And there was this very real sense that, you know, if we protest and demand change, perhaps there could be a difference.

Yeah. Whereas Gen Z 2.0 when it comes to their politics, first of all, they came of age really during the Biden era. This was a post-COVID sort of upbringing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Build back better in quotes. Right. And they really grew resistant to authority because they saw Democratic. who were largely in charge during the time where kids went back to school and where there were things like mask mandates and vaccine mandates. They saw Democrats in charge of that, especially in blue cities or blue areas across the country where Democrats were handling the way that schools were reopening. Exactly. And so young people whose sort of lives and childhoods were on the line with that felt like they were guinea pigs and experiment that they didn't sign up for. And I think this is when we saw a movement away from Democrats. I don't necessarily think that was towards Republicans. Trump capitalized on this in 2024 and the Trump 2.0 MAGA culture became the counterculture. But that's really hard to retain that cultural currency. And we're seeing that now in his second administration.

But we did see just broadly speaking, GenC2.0 is far less trusting of authority and institutions. Far more independent. They hate labels. And this isn't just political. They hate labels when it comes to gender. their relationships. No one wants to be boxed in. I hear this all the time in my focus groups. And so they just moved away from both parties writ large. Okay. This is great because it really lines up with what we saw from murmuration. It really identified how Gen Z's kind of fierce independence politically and overall. I imagine that doesn't surprise you. It lines up with what you heard in the focus groups. Definitely. And the other thing that we've seen largely about Gen Z2.0 is, you know, I talked about Gen Z1.0's relationship to advocacy and activism. Gen Z2.0,

looks at that and says, where did it get us? And we still have all of the same problems that we had then. And the activism, in some cases, created small marginal victories, like red flag laws in Florida, things like that. But it hasn't really shifted the culture. Yeah. And Trump was back in office again. And so a lot of young people who are lowercase P progressive in terms of being in favor of reproductive health care access and don't want there to be school shootings or mass shootings and believe in LGBTQ rights. Like, they are looking at these movements and saying, well, that didn't really get us anywhere.

And so they're turning more to local issues. And there's been broadly this sort of shift from, you know, if we all rally together, we can make a difference to maybe I should look at the ways I could do it in my own community. My own community in my own life. Right. That rings true, but I want to ask about it because, I mean, some ways that, again, feels familiar even in my own life. I think that there was a way of hope or optimism bubble burst for a group of millennials in the Obama administration that you thought that things like, you know, representation would save you. And I feel like that was like a learning that some folks had at that time.

But the shift towards a more like individualistic sense of self feels like a difference from one generation to the next. Like in some ways we're calling this political independence. Should we also think of Gen Z as just like individualistic? Yes and no. I mean, if you think about Gen Z at a macro level, we grew up with a device in our hand and we're taught to build our own brands across social media from like the very get-go. And that's also how you have to market yourself either to get into a college or to get a job. Everybody's a content creator.

Everybody has a brand of self. Right. And then also the cost of living is very high. and a lot of young people feel like before they can think about the rights of all of their neighbors and friends, they need to be thinking about can they even afford to put food on their own table and get by and support their own family. And so I think that's been part of the shift too. There's been multiple factors happening at once. Yeah, that's a better faith way of seeing it.

I mean, part of what this says, though, does speak to other piece of the murmuration data. They said only 9% of young adults believe the government's official explanations for major events. are usually accurate. That sort of institutional distrust feels like at the core of what you're talking about. Murmuration found that 40% of young adults believe that, quote, important facts are often or deliberately hidden from major events. And 26% believe that explanations from the government are usually incomplete. Like, the idea that only 9% of young adults would find government explanations of events to be truthful was kind of a shockingly low number for me. Like, that distrust both feels familiar, but that mass distrust feels unique to this generation.

Yeah. So I think looking at the distrust, there are so many reasons why young people might not trust the government. I get it too. Yeah, yeah. Lay them out for us. I mean, okay, so we already talked about COVID. That was massive. But they also have grown up only in the Trump era of politics. In every election that Genzi's been able to vote, Trump's been on the ballot at the presidential level. And he, you know, depending on what side of him you lie on, you either believe that he has broken down the government and it no longer is trustworthy, or you are distrusting of the government because he's told you to be distrusting of the government. Both sides of that coin actually agree that there's a democracy problem, right? That you either see him as a solution or a

cause. Right. So there's that. And then at the same time, we've grown up with social media and the to see through things and there's just a lack of transparency. And I've recently been asking this question in my focus groups. I phrase it two different ways. First, I say, what do you want to see from a political candidate or an elected official? And then I ask, what do you want to see from government? Because I've been trying to see if there's a difference between like candidates, leaders, and then the government as a whole.

And when we ask about government, what people are looking for is sort of broad social programming. So things like SNAP benefits and WIC and help with. with affordability for education and the cost of housing and even local people sleep on Gen Z's appetite for local politics. They want things like potholes to be fixed because that's like actually where they're feeling. And they are not necessarily seeing that happen. In few cases, they are seeing it happen. But when leaders are able to actually communicate transparently about what they are doing to make constituents' lives better for them, that's when you start to see that trust rebuild. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Pothole politics. You know, he's the best example of

this is that he responds directly to constituents' concerns on social media. So, like, they're showing, you know, this is something wrong. And then he's like, here I am fixing it. But, you know, it would be one thing if the kids were distrusting of traditional institutions and media and they had, you know, replaced it with an equally trustworthy source. You know, like sometimes it feels like there's been mass distrust of these institutions only the turn to TikTok or neighbor or something that isn't providing reliable information. Murmuration found that only 8% of 18 to 30-year-olds trust's mainstream news to discover what has actually happened.

So should I just see that as being displaced with the timeline? So, okay, I think that what young people are looking for when it comes to their news consumption is that they want verification across multiple different sources. Cross-checking. Yes. I've been asking this for years, and also one of those very important cross-checkers is people who actually experience the situation first. hand. Right. So they want to know from someone who's on the ground what is happening. And that's why I think, you know, you see a rise in personality-driven content across social media. A lot of the times, those are people who are actually on the ground experiencing something firsthand, and they're bringing their own perspective to it. And there was a Pew study that came out in the spring showing Gen Z News consumption habits. I wrote about this at the time. And they want journalists to be upfront about their own personal biases and where they're coming from, which when you've grown

up with this mindset, something that, you know, Gen Z's been taught is that everyone has their own, I hesitate to use the phrase lived experience because they don't love that phrase, but like their own personal way. Your story is valid in how it brought you to that place. Right. And so they want that

to be fused into the news coverage. It's not that young people aren't consuming traditional news content they are, but they're also looking for various other touch points that confirm that data or if they don't see it elsewhere, they're not going to believe it.

They're not going to believe it. And I think that some of that is really fair. I mean, I understand the ways that a projected objectivity or projected lack of bias has not always served news well. And I certainly get how when you see someone on the ground, whether it be in a Minnesota, at ICE enforcement or in Gaza, it makes you harder to trust mainstream outlets that may not be reflecting the reality that you see. firsthand. So some of that makes a lot of sense to me. I guess I just wonder about the kind of overall way that information ecosystems have changed. Like, it does seem a little bit like Gen Z is like victim to the algorithm. Like, are these choices that are shaped by the individuals? Are these

choices that are served to them? Like, how do we look at the causation? Yeah, it's both and. And I think what we're seeing this summer especially is a rejection and a rebuke of the algorithm. Actually, I have a report coming out on this next week. But if you look at what has been trending this summer, I actually wrote a piece for Vox about this, IRL summer, in-person community. Here in New York City, you had the NICs historic run and their win, the way people were celebrating in the streets. I mean, that was insane. Then you have the World Cup bringing Americans together all across the country. But you also saw more on the local level block parties, things like Love Island watch parties. Like people are wanting to be in person and

off their devices. There is a movement away from screens. And I think a large part of that is because, and what I'm hearing in my research, is that young people are sick and tired of having taste be decided for them. For them. Rather than coming to it on their own. And this is why we're sort of seeing a pushback to the traditional influencer as well and more for, like, the local creator. This has political implications.

But it is a much broader story about how Gen Z is really pushing back again. these algorithms that have defined their lives. After the break, how Gen Z is tackling the affordability crisis and the gender wars. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer.

Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. Hear that? It's your money calling. It wants a promotion. Elevate your savings with the Scotia High Interest Savings account. Always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest. Conditions apply. Visit Scotiabank.com slash h-I-SA to learn more. Scotia Bank. you're richer than you think. I wanted to talk about the economic data, which seems really central

here. You know, murmuration found that young adults blame three villains most clearly for their current economic plight. Inflation at 48 percent, corporate greed at 34 percent, and government economic policies at 32 percent. Does that match what you're hearing in terms of your focus groups? Like, that seems like a pretty clear diagnoses of who they think put them in this situation. Yeah. So what we're hearing broadly, about the economic situation in our focus groups. And it's really been the same since 2024, although now we have AI as a major cause of this too.

But it's just been that everything is too hard to afford. It feels like it's like you're one bad breakaway from, you know, if I was living my own, I'd be one bad break away from not being able to. And I feel like that's, or a majority of Americans feel like it was rather either underwater or just barely treading water. And when you ask about, you know, who are they sort of blaming for the current economic crisis, I do think that they blame politicians a lot of the time because they don't see economic policies that work for them. And they don't really see creative ideas around how to improve this

situation as they're trying to get their lives up and off the ground. And that's what they're really looking for from elected officials, especially when you're looking at the national conversation about what they might be looking for, let's, you know, ahead of 2028. They really are hungry for creative solutions about where to go from here, not just talking about, you know, address that the problem exists. I think part of the problem in 2024 was that Vice President Kamala Harris didn't really address the actual problems that young people were facing before offering a path forward. And they want both, don't gaslight, like actually say like, this is a problem.

And here's what my idea is to do about it. I think this is really important because I found that so much of a gap that we have covered in this show and I found in my reporting overall, it's sometimes just like, you. Like, politicians are unwilling to level with people that, you know, they can handle it if something doesn't work out. Right. There is an assumption that this information somehow beyond them or that they can't handle that. It does seem like, to your point, that there's a desire for creativity. There's a desire for disruption.

Murmuration found that 67% of adults under 30 believe it is more important to make changes to improve representation and fairness than it is to preserve stability and trust in existing Democratic. institutions. This feels to me like such a story we saw play out in 2024 where the pitch of a status quo was not acceptable, particularly for a rising generation where the status quo is not working for them. Like it seems as if disruption and creativity are what the baselines of what's required for things to work for them. Yes. And this is why we're seeing young people embracing DSA candidates. I know you've talked about this a lot. I've written about this extensively this summer. I think the biggest misconception about Genzi's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialist. That is just not the case.

Yeah, yeah. They are embracing candidates who are offering new bold ideas in the absence of those ideas from establishment Democrats. I would consider myself like a moderate Democrat, definitely left of center, but also at the same time a little bit politically homeless, as in I don't feel a connection to either party and like more distant as time has gone on. And so if, you know, more moderate center-left Democrats started to talk with rhetoric that matched the way that these DSA-style candidates are... That matched the urgency of the situation. Right. And offered bold ideas instead of just sort of, you know, nothing. They would get traction too. It's not rocket science. And this is, you know, I keep saying, like, young voters aren't that complicated.

After all, it's pretty simple. They want leaders who are going to deliver for them, who are going to. going to offer an idea for the future. Also, you know, this is, I'm sort of shifting gears here, but we haven't really talked about AI. That's my nice way. Okay. Appreciate you. And in 2026, when you're talking about the biggest issues and what's affecting young people's lives, AI is at the center of that. Yeah, I feel like it's so core to any discussion about a rising generation because their anxiety

about the future of work is justified. I mean, this is a changing landscape that has particularly affected fresh out of college folks or people looking to enter the workforce. And it feels as if AI is just kind of hitting a tipping point in the national political discussion. But how much should we see it as a driver of the economic anxiety that's so evident in the data? Huge. I think it's aside from inflation and obviously they're related, it is, you know, the biggest

economic factor for young people right now. Is that fear your job displacement? Is that just fear your skills don't match the new workforce? I guess it's all the above. It's all the above. And I mean, I really think it boils down, too, to a question of purpose. Because if Americans have traditionally found fulfillment, fulfillment and purpose through work, you have a generation who is on the brink of adulthood, who doesn't really know what their place in the world or the country is going to be because they don't know if their work is going to matter. Yeah.

And I think it's still will. I mean, I can't predict the future. But I think it's the fact that everyone around them, there's so much noise being told if you don't become fluent in AI, you will be a. irrelevant. So it's really affecting all young people. I'm going to ask about a couple of social movements because as you mentioned, you know, even your college paper, you were on it early, but there was so much social activism in the last 10 years. Thinking about Me Too movements, Black Lives Matter. You mentioned March for Our Lives, which I thought was so, like, emotional. Like, those were such big moments in culture and in politics. But we've recently seen,

you know, that time period, which has been grouped as kind of woke one, I would say, in political, world, be backed off by progressive politicians a little bit. implied in that is that the next generations won't maybe hold those values as dear or the performance of those values as dear as maybe we were eight, 10 years ago. Like, is that true? Like, have they changed their minds? No, I think it's just a movement away from identity politics. I don't think it's that any of the issues are any less important. I think this is the most diverse generation in American history. And so that diversity is just normal. That's just the day to day.

And young people don't want to be told what their politics should be because of the color of their skin or their sexual orientation or their gender. And so I think that's driven a lot of it because that got really old, really fast. And the other side of this as well is that it's really hard to sustain that type of activism online. The internet is a very mean place. And I think people just got really tired of that and feeling like they were constantly being attacked. for that most young people just want, you know, to be able to get by, to live a good life, to have their politicians deliver for their bottom line.

It's not that they don't care anymore about racial justice or about safe communities, but it just, the conversation has shifted onto the big, you know, it's hard to focus on that when there's the threat of war and they're, right, and you can't afford gas or groceries or education to get a job. to afford the rest of your life. And I also think we should say we did see particularly some activism around Israel's actions and gossom over the last couple years. I'm going to say by asking a couple questions specifically about the gender divide because that was such a big topic in the 2024 election. We heard at that time, and I reported on the kind of change among young men that we saw manifested in that race. There was a 17-point gap between the votes of Gen Z men and Gen Z women. And before we get to where we are now, like, what do you think drove that gap? Is it all Joe Rogan?

Is all Andrew Tate? Is it the incelization of young men? No. So, I mean, the easy thing to say is it's the algorithm. And I would say this is, like, an Internet thing specifically. But if you're, like, chronically online and your algorithm is very different, I think that's what makes some men seem so different from women right now. I feel like they're getting, like, propaganda more. to like be masculine and like kind of more conservative algorithms I've seen for like all of my like

guy friends. But that's not the whole picture. I think a lot of young women felt like their bodily autonomy, freedom, rights were on the line. And a lot of young men care about that. But when I asked them, you know, what's the top issue for you in the 2024 election? Few said abortion and I said, well, they were like, well, that's, I care about that, but that's not an issue that personally affects me. And so I think that's sort of what it came down to. Goes back to that independence, that individualism. Like, what's most hidden home? Right. Women literally felt like it was their futures that were in question. And we've seen, you know, when you talk about the gender gap, you noted that young men shifted to their

right. And that's, of course, true. Young women since 2017 have remarkably moved to the left. And there have been a number of different causes to that. But sort of, Every time there's been like a social wedge issue, whether it was early with immigration during Trump's first term, the Me Too movement, the conversation about reproductive health care access and the fall of Roe versus Wade and the jobs decision. Like there's been so many examples of things that have pushed women further to the left and then also just a frustration with the way that Trump talks about women or accusations that have been made against him. And also, you know, if you think about this is part of what I think makes this political period for. for Gen Z so fascinating is that, you know, the Trump era will shape history across every generation. But Gen Z are the ones whose lives were, their ideology was forming, exactly. And so there became this real sisterhood that emerged between young women during this time,

where both on social media and in person, they were finding camaraderie around sort of this shared, both fear for their future, but also appreciation of their individual rights and freedoms. and young men didn't see that same sort of bonding happening. And, you know, we talked a lot in 2024 about how Democrats had a problem with young men because they weren't actively reaching out to young men. They weren't bringing young men in as allies. And like, I'm the first person to say that that Democrats really screwed that up and that this is, this was a problem. But I think that there were not shared spaces for young men to come together in that way as there were for young women.

So I think that was part of what has driven this gap as well. Well, I'm going to say just one to underscore your point. I think it's a helpful rethinking of that data because so much has been said about young men's rightward turn. But as you're mentioning, really, you know, some of these gaps have been driven by a leftward turn among young women. That has been kind of a bond of sisterhood, but also inflected by important policy points along the way. That feels like it shows up in data and rings true. One thing that I think is under-talked about maybe, you know, this makes me think about an interview. we did with Senator Gallego about reaching young men and Democrats' attempts to that. And sometimes it feels like they don't want to admit, though, that shared spaces of young men, often that bond is created in values that are somewhat massagnistic or somewhat at odds with places that Democrats want to go. It's not that male bonding doesn't exist. It's that some of that bond was created in a backlash of a Me Too or in a backlash of some

of those spaces. And I think some dudes don't want to be honest about that. That's a very fair point. And I've seen a bunch of clips about this, you know, when people are talking about Democrats' problems with young men in 2024. They're like, go to a sports bar on a Sunday and watch football. Or, like, have you ever heard of fantasy football? Like, there are plenty of ways for young men to come together.

I feel like, I see white men gather every week watching soccer. Like, you know. I think it just doesn't code. To your point, it doesn't code politically in the same way that this women's rights movement of our era has. So that just speaks to the gap. Should we update our thinking, though, of that gender divide from then to? now? Like, are we still seeing the same big gaps between voting and political behavior from Gen Z men and Gen Z women? No. So largely, when I ask young people about the gender gap,

they acknowledge that it exists, but that they don't like it. They don't want to be stuck in this divide. Yeah. Gen Zee wants out of the gender war. They do. We're also now seeing a generation unite around a new set of issues that are pretty communal that everyone can kind of agree upon. There's a new shared set of issues that are less gendered and more affecting everybody. And that's AI and the economy. Yeah. So like Gen Z now agrees that the two main issues are AI and the economy. And obviously those are related.

But I see this. You're saying like, you know, the gender gap wars, however you want to describe it among young people, were at its peak, particularly because the parties were positioning themselves on kind of gendered lines as well. and now because of the consensus about issues that touch everyone, mainly the economy and AI, you know, it's a little bit of a permission structure to put the knives down in the gender fight because everyone's lives are affected by this. Yeah. And I think also a lot of the gender war in the first place was kind of manufactured by people who were talking about Gen Z and not to them. Sure. Yep. And you had the main candidates for president kind of playing into that too. And it was a man versus a woman. And it was kind of. of like these are your two options. And we've just, we're far past that. I've talked about how Gen Z is hope maxing. Like they, they want, it's kind of like, you know, you can say, oh,

like it's giving Obama, but they really are looking for something to feel excited about. Like, it's enough of the doom and gloom. Yeah. You know, growing up in this era has been exhausting. The division and the vitriol isn't fun for anyone. And like, yeah, maybe it's the, uh, you know, the hopeless optimist in me. But I think that there is a real appetite for a post-Trumpian era of politics that is just less toxic. And that feels more hopeful

and gives you something to rally around and unite around rather than to be divided for. I mean, like, this has made me feel better. Like, in my Gen Z, skepticism, and also more importantly, as a piece of hope. You know, sometimes when we think about our post-Trump future, as we do on this show, it could be hard to see where those moments of hope come from.

But we appreciate you laying one now. Thank you for coming on. Thanks so much for having me. That's it for this week's episode. But before I go, I am working on a study guide for you all about the midterms. And I want to know your questions that you have about the November election. Are you curious about which races matter most for congressional control? Are you interested in learning about which races matter most when it comes to AI and data centers?

What about integrity of the vote? Leave us a message at 844453-44-48. Again, that's 844-453-44-8. Tell us your name and where you're from while you're at it. We'll try and answer your questions in our upcoming episode, and thank you so much for calling in. America actually will be in your feeds every Saturday with an interesting interview and culture or podcast. politics. You can also watch these episodes on the Vox YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube.com slash Vox or click the link in the show notes. The best way to support this show is by becoming

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David Tadishore and Nisha Chittal. I'm Asned Herndon and this is America Actually. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, joined thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

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