The rise of the young conservatives: Gen Z turns away from the left

“It’s starting to feel cool to be a conservative now,” 19-year-old Kieran Laffey said.

A shift is underway for the Democratic Party, which has been counting on the youth vote for decades. Polls show a growing wave of young people embracing conservative views, breaking from the liberal bent that has dominated the youth of past generations.

“Younger people all over the country are kind of waking up,” said Mr. Laffey, a junior studying political science at George Washington University in the District of Columbia and chair of the GW College Republicans.

He is a member of Generation Z, born between the late 1990s and early 2010s. The generation’s youngest members are in high school, and the older Gen Z are out of school. They are all younger than 30, and many are rebelling against the liberal establishment and what they see as oppressive left-wing dogma.

“Everything we’ve seen for the past, even decade, people like myself, young, White male, we’ve been completely demonized and almost hated and told that somehow we’re wrong, we’re racist or sexist,” he said.

Some liberals blame the emergence of young conservatives on the chronic use of smartphones and computers, where they say misinformation and disinformation run rampant.

“Technology is everywhere, right at your fingertips, with TikTok and all that stuff,” said Ryan Gaire, 19, president of the College Democrats chapter at Binghamton University in New York. “You can just see blatant misinformation, and it’s not called out anymore.”

Split personalities

A Yale Youth Poll from the spring found that voters ages 22-29 favored the Democratic candidate by roughly 6 percentage points, but those ages 18-21 favored the Republican candidate by almost 12 points.

The youngest eligible voters lean more conservative regarding other social views as well. They are less likely to support transgender athletes in women’s sports and oppose more aid to Ukraine.

The older members of the generation had different life experiences. Younger members of Gen Z were growing up as COVID-19 mandates changed their in-school time to online, masks were introduced and the country was divided over how to handle a pandemic. That impacted their political views differently than older Gen Zers, who saw their friends at school and participated in sports, prom and graduation before the pandemic upended school and social life.

Mr. Laffey, who was 14 during the beginning of the pandemic, said he started “waking up to American politics” during the lockdowns.

“I was a normal kid in high school, played hockey my whole life, hung out with my friends, and that all stopped,” he said. “I started to realize: Oh, who’s kind of pulling the strings here? What’s going on?”

How Trump made conservatism cool

Beyond the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, older members of Gen Z experienced childhood before the smartphone takeover, with limited social media apps and less technology used in the classroom.

Younger Gen Zers never touched a flip phone, had an abundance of social media apps at their fingertips, and used Chromebooks in school. They reached voting age at a time when social media dominated and influencers became celebrities.

In 2024, both major political parties’ national conventions featured influencers for the first time, pumping content onto Instagram, TikTok and X.

“I think the one driving source was Donald J. Trump and his candidacy. If he was not the candidate, I don’t think we would have seen the massive switch in the youth vote that we did between 2016, 2020 to 2024,” said former Iowa state Rep. Joe Mitchell, 28, who was the state’s youngest state legislator and founded Run GenZ to help young Republicans running for office.

Mr. Mitchell said people were “yearning for authentic, genuine candidates” who made them feel heard. Mr. Trump offered that by breaking the mold without fear of scrutiny or being canceled.

He said the movement grew from 2016 through 2024, aided by Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA for high school and college-age conservatives.

“We broke through the culture this election like we never have before.”

It’s not just a phase

The “What Happened 2024” report by the data analysts at Catalist found a drop in Democratic support among voters younger than 30 from 61% in 2020 to 55% in 2024. For years, the youth vote for Democrats was at a historic high.

It’s part of the voter registration crisis afflicting the Democratic Party.

Party registration showed some of its largest declines among men and young people when shedding about 2.1 million registered voters from the 2020 to the 2024 elections. Republicans gained 2.4 million, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

The party’s decrease in voter registration was measured in 30 states and the District of Columbia, where voters register with a political party. Voters in the 20 other states do not register by party.

“This is a generation that’s weathered pandemic isolation during formative years, entered an unstable economy, and faced skyrocketing housing and education costs — all while being told they’re not resilient enough,” said John Della Volpe, director of Polling at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. “What Gen Z needs isn’t another lecture, but genuine recognition of their struggles and leaders willing to listen before they speak.”

Mr. Gaire, the College Democrats president at Binghamton University, acknowledged he was “pretty disillusioned” with how his party has campaigned over the past few years.

“When we talk about Gen Z shifting to the right and these kinds of things, even if I think the Trump campaign did do some good things in terms of reaching out to them … ultimately, it’s a failure of the Democratic Party,” he said.