Gen Z Men Are Shifting Right. What Could That Mean for Kamala Harris? - Newsweek

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

 By Katherine Fung Senior Writer

Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign is going all in on the "brat" and "coconut" memes they believe will help them win over some of the 41 million members of Gen Z who will be eligible to vote in November.

Her opponent, former President Donald Trump's campaign has also been courting young voters in its own way, narrowly tailoring its online presence to a particular subset of young Americans: the Gen Z men who could become the swing cohort of this year's presidential election.

It's the same demographic that has boosted far-right parties across the globe. In Argentina, Gen Z men helped the eccentric libertarian Javier Milei topple the country's two main political forces in 2021. In South Korea—where the ideological divide between young men and women has grown wider than anywhere else on Earth—young men overwhelmingly backed conservative candidate Yoon Suk Yeol, catapulting him to the presidency in 2022. On Sunday, young men in Germany delivered the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party the far right's best result since the Nazi era.

The rise of right-wing youth politics has also been observed in China, the UK, France, Portugal, Tunisia, Belgium and Finland. And in America, it has piqued the interest of the most influential Republican.

Over the last few months, Trump has turned his attention to young male voters, appearing on Theo Von and Lex Fridman's podcasts, livestreaming with Adin Ross, making TikToks with Logan and Jake Paul and putting his 18-year-old Gen Z son Barron and his best friend Bo Loudon at the helm of his social media outreach team.

On Tuesday, Trump signaled he'd be open to an interview on the Joe Rogan Experience, the most-listened-to podcast in the U.S. with an estimated 11 million listeners per episode. Some bookmakers are now even taking bets on whether Trump will make an appearance on Rogan.

Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to reporters outside of Primanti Bros. Restaurant on August 18, 2024 in Moon Township, Pennsylvania. Harris has become a internet sensation since announcing her candidacy, going viral...Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to reporters outside of Primanti Bros. Restaurant on August 18, 2024 in Moon Township, Pennsylvania. Harris has become a internet sensation since announcing her candidacy, going viral for embracing the brat trend and the coconut tree memes. More Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

"It's a smart political strategy by the Trump campaign—to try to meet young men where they are," Melissa Deckman, CEO of the nonpartisan research firm PRRI and the author of "The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy," told Newsweek. "They're more likely to watch Joe Rogan or Logan Paul or hang out at mixed martial arts events."

The winning candidate "is going to be the person that meets Gen Z where they are," Mason Morgan, the executive director of Run Gen Z, a group that recruits young conservatives for local and state office, told Newsweek.

Recent polls show that Gen Z is far more conservative than some might think, given the history of young Americans skewing liberal. A SurveyUSA poll conducted earlier this month showed Trump leading Harris among Gen Z voters by four percentage points, with 50 percent of voters aged 18 to 34 backing the former president and 46 percent supporting the vice president.

Data from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation also found that Gen Z teens are twice as likely to identify as more conservative than their parents than millennials were 20 years ago. Even though the cohort of teens who feel this way remains relatively small —14% —it suggests a generational shift. When comparing their views to their parents, only seven percent of millennials said their views were "more conservative" two decades ago.

But it's not a broad group of Gen Z teens driving that jump.

"It's typically reflective of a gender split, where it's mostly young men who are becoming more conservative and mostly young women who are not," Zach Hrynowski, the primary researcher of the Gen Z panel and Gallup's senior education consultant, told Newsweek.

"This year's election is going to be one of the biggest gender splits," he said.

Former President and current Republican nominee Donald Trump at a campaign event at Alro Steel on August 29, 2024 in Potterville, Michigan. Trump has been appealing to young men on social media.Former President and current Republican nominee Donald Trump at a campaign event at Alro Steel on August 29, 2024 in Potterville, Michigan. Trump has been appealing to young men on social media.Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

The divide between young men and women has widening over the years. In the 2022 midterms, a year in which voter turnout was expected to be low, 72 percent of women aged 18 to 29 voted for Democrats in House races, compared to about 54 percent of their male counterparts.

"Gen Z women have become far more liberal than older American women, but also their male counterparts," Deckman said. "This is a generation of women who are far more likely to identify as feminist than, certainly, younger men, but also older women. And they are a generation of young voters who have become a huge constituency for the Democratic Party."

At the same time, "young men, around the world, are feeling a loss of status because women have been doing so well, comparatively, in a lot of ways," she said.

"Young men don't feel they can be included in Kamala Harris' 'new path forward,'" Benjamin Geller, a former New York Republican legislator and political media strategist, told Newsweek.

"President Trump gives young men of all backgrounds an opportunity to achieve anything they've ever set their minds to and feel included at the same time."

Four national New York Times/Siena College polls conducted between December and June, when President Joe Biden was still the presumptive Democratic nominee, showed a 39-point gender gap between young men and women. While the former favored Trump by an average of 11 percentage points, the latter favored Biden by 28 points.

And while Harris' candidacy may have closed the Democrats enthusiasm gap, it's only widened the gender divide. The Times/Siena polls of six swing states last week showed a 51-point chasm between young men and women.

Though polls show that Trump has made inroads with Gen Z, especially among young men, some argue the data is not reflective of the broader voting bloc. Jack Lobel, the national press secretary of left-leaning youth voter engagement organization Voters of Tomorrow, pointed out that many younger Americans wouldn't think to pick up the phone when pollsters call, and that the sample size in national polls are not large enough to draw any conclusive data.

"Polling young voters is very difficult," Lobel told Newsweek.

He pointed instead to voter registration, which has shown an influx of young Democrats, and specialized surveys like the ones Voters of Tomorrow conducts. Last week, the group, which is backing Harris, released a new poll that sampled 1,601 voters aged 18 to 29 across seven battleground states. The survey found Harris leading Trump by 44 points among registered Gen Z voters in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin.

Another issue that pollsters acknowledge is the diversity within Gen Z, which is generally considered to include those born from 1997 to 2012.

"The increased and sort of unprecedented diversity in this generation could be covering up some of those divergences that we're seeing elsewhere," Hrynowski, from Gallup, said.

Gallup's data also found race-based gaps between Gen Z voters when it comes to party identification. Only one percent of Black respondents and six percent of Asian respondents identified as Republican, compared to 11% of Hispanic respondents and 23% of white respondents.

There is one thing, however, that has unified Gen Z: economic anxieties. It is one of the working explanations behind the generation's conservative shift that Hrynowski and his team have explored.

"They were born into the aftermath of a global recession, in the middle of two ongoing wars, and since they've been born, they probably feel like the world has been moving pretty quickly," he said. "There may just be a desire for stability."

"It's not necessarily adherence to large-C or Republican ideals so much as a slightly higher preference for small-c conservativism," he added.

That is the theory that Republicans are hoping will give Trump a boost among young voters.

"Gen Z is being forced to grow up faster than any other generation has in the recent past because of the economic realities that they're facing," Morgan said. "Why do they feel that the American Dream is harder to achieve? What economic factors are different than when their parents or their older siblings were entering the workforce and leaving college?"

Deckman said looking at her own research as well as testing from the progressive-leaning Young Men Research Initiative, young men are far more receptive to Harris' candidacy when the messaging focuses on policy, like economic proposals, than on the historic nature of Harris being the first female president if elected—a move that Harris already seems to have embraced in an effort to avoid Hillary Clinton's mistakes.

But even if Harris is the candidate who is, as she says on the stump, willing to be a president for all Americans, Deckman said it's critical that the vice president comes up with a response to the political right's argument that the left has waged a war on masculinity.

"I don't think that most young men agree with that. I think it's a lot more complicated, but nonetheless, that's an argument that you're hearing," she said. "So, I do think that the Democrats have to come up with a compelling narrative to say that those things aren't true at all. "

"The #MeToo movement has been a powerful movement that has really galvanized young women, has made them aware of the fact that sexism is nothing of the past," she added. "But in talking about toxic masculinity, there's some concern from some people that it might send the message to young men that there's something wrong with them. Trying to thread that needle and talk to young men is really important. It's a challenge for Democrats today."