After 12 years of dominating American politics — either as president, as a candidate, or from the sidelines — Donald Trump will finally exit the stage in 2028, and it’s anybody’s guess what will come next. But one thing we do know is that Gen Z, many of whom were children during Trump’s first campaign, will play a large role in shaping that future.
What’s less clear is what direction they might choose or what their politics are in the first place.
We do know a few things, thanks to a Vox collaboration with the polling firm Murmuration. For one, they’re highly independent: Almost 30 percent answered “none of the above” when they were asked to choose their political label in Murmuration’s survey. They’re an economically insecure cohort, at least for now; Murmuration found that only 28 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 30 said they could cover an unexpected expense of $500. And they had the largest gender gap of any age group when it came to supporting the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024 — women preferred Kamala Harris by 17 percentage points over men.
To find out more, Vox’s Astead Herndon spoke with Gen Z researcher Rachel Janfaza for a recent episode of America, Actually. They discussed the group’s political identities, preferences, and top issues, and what that all could mean for politics going forward. They discussed an important distinction between two versions of Gen Z, and whether its infamous gender gap is shifting. They also touched on how, contrary to seemingly everyone else, Gen Z is hope-maxxing.
Below is an excerpt of Astead’s conversation with Janfaza, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.
You’ve done a lot of work around the different Gen Zs. I’ve heard you talk about Gen Z 1 versus Gen Z 2. How would we describe those differences?
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-ers, just had a different worldview than the younger half of Gen Z, who were still in high school at the time that the pandemic hit.
And that is because of the taste of independence that people on the older cusp of Gen Z had prior to the lockdown situation. Anyone who 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.
Can you just name for me what the difference was between the generations? How did that shape a different form of politics?
Gen Z 1.0 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-led activism in response to actions or inaction from the first Trump administration.
You saw things like the March for Our 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.
Whereas Gen Z 2.0 came of age during the Biden era. This was a post-Covid sort of upbringing. And they really grew resistant to authority because they saw Democrats in charge during the time when kids went back to school and when there were things like mask mandates and vaccine mandates, especially in blue areas across the country where Democrats were handling the way that schools were reopening.
Young people whose lives and childhoods were on the line felt like they were guinea pigs in an 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 toward Republicans.
Trump capitalized on this in 2024. Broadly speaking, Gen Z 2.0 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.
I also want to ask a couple of 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 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. Before we get to where we are now, what do you think drove that gap?
No. The easy thing to say is it’s the algorithm, 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, “What’s the top issue in the 2024 election?” few said abortion. They were like, “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.
Women literally felt like it was their futures that were in question. And when you talk about the gender gap, you noted that young men shifted to the 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 every time there’s been a social wedge issue, whether it was early with immigration during Trump’s first term, the MeToo movement, the conversation about reproductive healthcare access and the fall of Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs decision … there have been so many examples of things that have pushed women further to the left, and then also a frustration with the way that Trump talks about women or accusations that have been made against him.
This is part of what I think makes this political period for Gen Z so fascinating. The Trump era will shape history across every generation, but Gen Z are the ones whose ideology was forming. And so there was this real sisterhood that emerged between young women during this time, where both on social media and in person, they were finding camaraderie around this shared 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 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. I’m the first person to say that Democrats really screwed that up, and that 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. I think that was part of what has driven this gap as well.
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 women?
No. So largely, when I ask young people about the gender gap, they acknowledge that it exists, but they don’t like it. They don’t want to be stuck in this divide. Gen Z 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.
AI? What are you talking about?
AI and the economy. Gen Z now agrees that the two main issues are AI and the economy. And obviously those are related.
I see this. You’re saying the gender gap among young people was at its peak because the parties were positioning themselves on gendered lines as well. And now, because of the consensus about issues that touch everyone, mainly the economy and AI, 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.
I think 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. You had the main candidates for president playing into that, too, and it was a man versus a woman, and it was kind of like, “These are your two options.” And we’re far past that.
I’ve talked about how Gen Z is hope-maxxing. You can say, “Oh, like it’s giving Obama,” but they really are looking for something to feel excited about. It’s enough of the doom and gloom. Growing up in this era has been exhausting.
The division and the vitriol isn’t fun for anyone. And maybe it’s 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.
