WSJ What’s News - What Gen Z Support for Trump Says About Their Changing Politics

Episode Date: December 15, 2024

During this presidential election, the youth vote shifted in Trump's favor. The issues guiding young voters are shifting. What does this change tell us about how the next generation is thinking about Trump, politics and the role of government in their lives? We talk to WSJ’s Jimmy Vielkind about what he heard from Gen Z voters across the country while reporting Chasing the Base and Chasing the Vote, and to reporter and editor Aaron Zitner about the demographics and economics driving this shift. Charlotte Gartenberg hosts. Further Reading Young Voters Helped Fuel Trump’s Win  Trump Is Attracting Young Male Voters. Can Harris Change That?  Why Gen Z Voters Are America’s Most Disillusioned  Who Voted? A Younger, More Female Electorate  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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For new U.S. customers with minimum financial commitment, offer ends $12.3124. See if your company qualifies at oracle.com slash Wall Street. Hey, What's News listeners. It's Sunday, December 15th. I'm Charlotte Gartenberg for The Wall Street Journal. This is What's News Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest stories in the news by reaching out to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's happening in our world.

This week, Gen Z helped fuel Trump's win. More of them showed up to vote than in previous presidential elections, and more of them voted Republican. So what brought them to the polls? And what does this tell us about the coming generation's thinking and political influence? Let's get to it.

Kamala Harris still won the majority in the group of voters 18 to 29 years old, but only with a four-point advantage against a 25-point margin in President Biden's 2020 victory. The youth vote is not a monolith, but we did see some trends, from the economy taking first place above all else, to men and women moving in opposing ideological directions. So what do these trends tell us about how the next generation is thinking about the president-elect, politics, and the role of government in their lives? Here to walk us through is reporter and editor Erin Zittner,

who focuses on how demographics and economics drive politics, and reporter Jimmy Vealkind, who you may have heard for many Sundays right here on the What's News feed for Chasing the Base and Chasing the Vote, where he reported on voter attitudes all over the country leading up to the election. All right, Aaron, we could spend a whole episode on just this, but summarizing quickly, what were the big issues that brought young people to the polls? Number one, the economy. And number two, just the sense of dissatisfaction with the leadership of the country in the form of President Biden and the direction of the country overall. A sense of

no one's really steering the ship and I'm not happy with the economy right now. And so I don't have a lot of faith that the party in power is going to make things better. I mean, is this also a sign of an ideological shift amongst young people? This brings us to the gender discussion. In my look at the data, women have become more liberal. Their ideology has changed. We talked to many, many young women in our reporting who didn't feel connected to the Democratic Party because they thought the Democratic Party was not liberal enough. Now men, by contrast, have been

kind of more non-ideological. We don't see any shift among young men when we ask, do you consider yourself to be liberal or conservative? But they have shifted more Republican. We see a lot of this in our polls when we talk to young people and we ask about things like climate change young women Overwhelmingly want urgent action on climate change young men less So on abortion both young men and young women are favor abortion rights But the women much much more than men and young women are favor abortion rights, but the women much, much more than men. And then we get to things that speak to lived experience. One of the signature

Biden policies was forgiving federally funded student loans. In our polling, young women favored forgiving federally funded student loans by 45 points. Young men were about evenly divided. That's a big difference. 45 points in favor of a policy versus meh, take it or leave it. And we think that connects to lived experience. Young women go to college more than young men. Young women have more college debt than young men. RISA GOLUBOFF Jimmy, how did you hear this growing gender gap as you were reporting around the country? JIMMY HARTMAN After the election, I spoke with voters in several key swing states,

including someone named Cody Miller, who is a political science major at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. He described to me a sort of feeling of frustration or being put upon that he felt as a young man that is coming from what he perceived to be mainstream culture and the power of the government. Here's what he told me, quote, a lot of people in power are talking about how young men, specifically young white men, have some sort of privilege that doesn't actually exist.

People feel the system is working actively against them while these liberal elites are in charge." President Trump, of course, tapped into that sense of grievance and provided a character and a model for someone who can rise and not care about any of the conventions of political correctness in society. So Cody said that struck a chord with him and it's something that I heard from many other young male voters who supported President Trump and other Republican candidates. And we heard the same thing in our reporting elsewhere. There's a real difference in how young men and young women are coming into adulthood. I talked to a young man, a 23-year-old farmer in North Dakota who said, it seems that the white male is the enemy of the left. And we talked to college

kids who said, yeah, you know, you're a freshman or a sophomore. All the internships are reserved for minority candidates. And I'm a young white guy. I can't even expect to get an internship until I'm a junior or a senior. And they're sensing the kind of diversity, equity, and inclusion push working against them and they associate that with the Democratic Party. Now let's talk about young women coming of age. Think of a young woman who's just beginning to think about politics. One of the first things she might have heard is Donald Trump's grab them by the genitals, the famous Access Hollywood tape, an affront to women and yet he gets elected anyway. And then that young woman would see the Dobbs decision and abortion rights, which

many had taken for granted as part of the bedrock of life in America, taken away. Each of these is seen among many young women as an affront, as a sign of disrespect, if not outright stripping of rights. And that's what's on their mind as they come of age and make voting decisions. All right, we've got to take a short break, but when we come back, we're going to get a little bit more into how the campaigns worked, particularly to sort of capture that men ages 18 to 29, and also what these shifting strategies might say about what young people expect from their political leaders. That's after the break. How do you compete without cost spiraling? Upgrade to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI.

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All right, guys, Erin, Jimmy, we saw a big shift in how the campaigns played out this year. Both candidates spent a lot of time on podcasts. Trump famously went on Joe Rogan, among others. But he also leaned into new media like TikTok, influencer culture. Part of this is because that's where young people consume media generally. But are we also seeing a shift in the relationship that young people expect to have with politicians? My experience of the campaign was my 20-year-old son calling me up and saying, hey, dad, did

you see Trump went on with Aidan Ross? And I'd say, who's Aidan Ross? And he'd say, hey, dad, he has 7 million followers on Twitch. You got to know who Aidan Ross is. He would call me up and say, hey, dad, did you see the video that Trump just made with Bryson DeChambeau? It has 3 million views. And I'd say, who's Bryson DeChambeau?

And he'd say, he's a big golfer with a big social media follower. These are social media that have their own audiences that are not political, but they have a loyal following. And when Trump would go on them, he would be signaling, I understand this audience and I'm not going as a politician. I'm going kind of as an entertainer and maybe not so much us on this podcast because we're kind of buttoned down Wall Street Journal types. But you go on these podcasts, there's room to breathe.

You can be unscripted and Trump is very good at that. Full disclosure, I'm a millennial, elder millennial. And I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, is this just a modern version of Bill Clinton playing the saxophone on Arsenio Hall in 1992? Or is it the same as Clinton doing an hour long interview on MTV? Is this just like the same as meeting the younger people where they're at or is there something else going on?

Well, you can go further back. You can go to John F. Kennedy using this brand new medium called television to make Richard Nixon look aloof and stiff in the 1960 presidential election. I think part of it is meeting voters where they are. But I think that Donald Trump's personality is

sort of uniquely situated to these circumstances and these spaces that Aaron has described. And going back before Donald Trump was ever a candidate for public office, he had a knack for building attention around himself. He has a certain element of braggadocio

that is sort of fundamental to his personality. These are the kinds of spaces and the kinds of interactions where he does really well. Given the success of using where he does really well. Given the success of using new media to access younger voters, do you think we're going to see changes in how politicians campaign? Jimmy? I do think we will.

We already saw this year during the Democratic National Committee convention in Chicago that seats that were traditionally reserved for the press at establishment outlets were given over to content creators, people who, again, as Aaron said, don't necessarily cover politics, but who have followings. I think that these were the first steps in this cycle, and I would be shocked if they are not repeated in upcoming elections, both for presidency or for Congress and state and local offices. In the past, as young people, for boomers to affect change in the world, the narrative

was you join the civil service. For millennials, we work for nonprofits. What is it for Gen Z? I mean, what's the change that they want to see in the world? And how do they think to affect that change? Charlotte, I think you hit correctly on how millennials tend to move outside of government to sort of advocacy organizations. I detected a lot of that among Gen Z voters I spoke to, but sprinkled into it is a sensibility of not being afraid to start your own thing

and not being afraid to use digital tools and to focus on the digital world. Remember we're also talking about a more racially diverse set of people than in past cohorts and the young people today are they're different than their parents you know young black men and women are further removed from the civil rights era and that connection to the civil rights era motivated a lot of voting and when you talk about Latino young people they're more removed from the civil rights era. And that connection to the civil rights era motivated a lot of voting. And when you talk about Latino young people, they're more removed from the immigrant experience. Far more young Hispanic voters are U S born.

So they're taking their voting cues less from racial and ethnic identity and more from something else. And to your question, I would say that something else is their economic independence and economic prospects removed from their racial or ethnic background. So going forward, how do young people see the role of government in their lives? What's the future of this generation? Oh, I found a very big notion of being dispirited by the idea of government. I can remember being in Atlanta talking to some voters on the Beltline in that southern city and having a feeling of resignation by younger voters who were prepared to vote

for Democrats but feeling like there would be no major change. Feeling that Kamala Harris did not represent the kinds of major changes that they wished to see in this society. There was disengagement because they didn't feel that the current political system represented them and gave them a true voice or a true choice. So I think a lot of the answer to that, Charlotte, is going to depend upon what the parties and particularly the Democratic Party, which has more historically been aligned with younger voters

as to whether or not it can capture some of the energy and enthusiasm among younger voters that it has traditionally relied upon in presidential elections. That was reporter and editor Aaron Zittner and reporter Jimmy Vielkind. Aaron, Jimmy, thank you so much. Good to be with you.

Happy to be here, Charlotte. And that's it for What's New Sunday for December 15th. Today's show was produced by me, Charlotte Gartenberg, with supervising producer Michael Kosmides. We got help from deputy editors Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley. I'm Charlotte Gartenberg. We'll be back on Monday morning with a new show. Thanks for listening.

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