Summary

Donald Trump’s popularity among Generation Z voters has sharply declined since the 2024 election, according to a new Economist/YouGov poll.

His net favorability among 18-29-year-olds has dropped from +19 in November to -18, raising concerns for Republicans about sustaining youth support.

While Trump gained ground with young voters in 2024, recent policies—such as his mass deportation plan and targeting of DEI initiatives—may have contributed to this decline.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    Good news, having such an eye-awakening experience at an impressionable age can drive people left-wing for their lifetime. Same has happened during Trump-1, Bush-2 and Bush-3, (now in Canadian politics) the Walkerton Crisis, the Mulroney days, and now hopefully with Doug Ford.

    Bad news: They already got played, and they might get played again in 4 years with billions of big tech money intended to distract the masses.

        • samus12345@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Yes, in blue states. State governments are responsible for elections, not Federal. I expect plenty of fraud and worse-than-usual voter suppression in Republican-governed states, though.

    • stickly@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      A lot of people were the same age when GWB was signing the Patriot Act and didn’t realize the consequences of his presidency until much later. Young people are impressionable but they do change.

    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      I was 16 at the start of the last time, so yeah quite a few of the middle and younger zoomers may legit not remember or were too young to understand.

    • TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      If you think about it, a TON of zoomers were maybe 10 years old when he started his shit.

      It’s literally all they have known for most of their formative years. I blame their parents more then them. They never talked to their kids about what he’s doing apparently.

      I tell my two kids that what he is doing is evil, and anyone who follows him is broken in some form or another. I tell them ALL the stuff our country has done, good and bad, and to keep learning, keep questioning, and most of all: beware of people like him. They are world enders.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    We thought GenZ was going to save us, but that was bullshit.

    I work with a few in a DEEP BLUE state in a field in which the majority of my co-workers have been liberal and they’re Trumpers. Morons who grew up on social media and had their minds warped by it. Fell for the alpha male bullshit too.

    They aren’t going to save us. They’re pretty dumb.

    • gmtom@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Surprise the iPad kid generation that were brought up on 4chsn derived troll culture are not bastions of virtue.

      Like I have a zoomer nephew, and he’s genuinely a good kid at heart, and his mum raised him well, but he also showed me things like videos of people harassing kids in video games until they meltdown like it was the funniest shit in the world, and also thinks Trump is super funny.

      Being a shitty person is just good “content”.

      • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Seeing this with my own kids. We strictly manage their YouTube time, and that’s fucking hard because there’s million stupid ways to sneak on to YouTube. I wish there was a way to set them up with an allowlist feed instead of having to go and block every single bullshit video and channel, but then they couldn’t feed my kids to the algorithm to make it shit out money, I guess.

  • Secret Music@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 months ago

    I get that these kids were brainwashed a little but what bothers me is that it was never any secret what was happening to women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights but they went for it anyway. It wasn’t some secret plot or trick, these people told us all exactly what they’re about.

    Even if they don’t care about queer people, they happily sold out the rights of their own mothers because the word of some ex reality TV star meat head was more important to them. I feel like even if I was that age being bombarded by propaganda, I would’ve woken the fuck up the moment they started going after my mother and my sisters.

    I actually saw a story on Reddit shortly after the election, that’s a double whammy in this regard. It was a divorced woman who is currently in a relationship with another woman, telling the story of how her own son visited her and fessed up to voting for Trump and happily said out loud “I don’t agree with gay people.” Based on the reactions she described afterwards, this dumb piece of shit kid only realised that the people he was hating included his own mother, after it was already too late.

    It’s all fucked. I forgive these kids to an extent but I know that when I was that age, I did in fact have a sense of morality and could in fact use my own brains to figure things out for myself.

    • seejur@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      They voted for the memes, and are now in the process of realizing real life is not a meme

    • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I think these polls are bullshit. The same gen Z kids who voted Trump after being brainwashed for years watching Rogan, Shapiro, etc rail on DEI, trans, ‘wokeism’ and ‘open borders’ haven’t suddenly changed their opinion once Trump’s started enacting policies that aim to enact those goals.

      These kids just recognize how unpopular these actions are in the wider community and are lying to pollsters now. It’s virtue signalling. They’ll continue to vote right-wing imho

  • uis@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Either USSA 18-29-years-old are weird, or newsweek is corporate shill. Mix in one bag

    mass deportation plan, targeting of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and suggesting that the U.S. will “take over” the Gaza Strip and resettle Palestinians from the area while it is rebuilt.

    and ignore everything else.

    Well, thank Faust, I am not in Memericas.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Cannot wait for the types of gen z voters that voted for a dipshit like donvict to turn around and blame “boomers” for their issues.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      They kinda already are. Though they seem to be blaming the Democrats for not doing enough to convince them to not be stupid.

      Being raised by social media has caused some issues with them. They seem to value the ability to say whatever you need to say to get to the top of the algorithm and aren’t able to question the algorithm itself.

  • JohnnyFlapHoleSeed@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    That’s odd because the only Gen z people who liked Trump were the paid Russian propogandists that were creating all the fake bullshit memes for him

    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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      5 months ago

      I listened in on a conversation between two young male Kroger union members before the election (the store is unionized so maybe that was an assumption, it’s a right to work state…)

      They both agreed they were voting for Trump. I can’t speak to their unspoken motivations but what I can tell you is they absolutely voted on vibes and didn’t have a goddamn clue what was coming for them.

      I don’t know what brain rotted the Gen Z boys in a way that didn’t work on the Gen Z girls but I can tell you it wasn’t fake, those kids are not alright.

      Maybe this will be Gen Z’s Afghanistan and Iraq, the events that push them left against Republican abuse, but I’m not sure they’ll have a chance when they’re getting a steady diet of algorithmic propaganda.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        I don’t know what brain rotted the Gen Z boys in a way that didn’t work on the Gen Z girls but I can tell you it wasn’t fake, those kids are not alright.

        its nothing to do with brainrot, its the same shit that makes your dad the single dumbest person you’ve ever seen whenever he speaks on politics.

        • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          People have done things where they start with a clean VM and set up something like Youtube, watching the most innocuous of things. Doesn’t take too long before they start getting the red pill shit.

          That doesn’t happen with broadcast media. You don’t start off watching, say, C-SPAN or PBS, and next thing you know you are getting shown Nazi propaganda.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 months ago

            you have to consciously consume it though, as a consumer of information and media, you hold a responsibility to ensure that what you’re consuming is both good, and factually accurate. If you aren’t doing that, that’s your fault.

            People can argue all they want about content algorithms pushing this content, it’s because it’s good content, that’s why its fucking propaganda. It wouldn’t be if it didn’t.

              • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                5 months ago

                there are definitely arguments to regulate against it, i’m not here to make those arguments, or argue against it, i’m just here to argue that you as an individual person have a right to hold yourself responsible for the media you consume, it’s not difficult, it’s taught to you in high school, assuming you can read and write, if you went to college, great, you literally do that the entire time you’re there, that’s the one thing you should be doing.

                If you don’t and you work in a blue collar job, it probably requires similar attention from you in the same manner, just apply it universally.

                • DrDeadCrash@programming.dev
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                  4 months ago

                  I realize that I, as an individual can make choices and am responsible for those choices. I’m not here to talk about that today, I’m only referring to the fact that when a natural human failing is set upon by money men with the intention of exploitation it is only regulation or destruction that will end that exploitation.

            • stickly@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              You really don’t have to consciously consume it. You can literally leave auto-play on YouTube and it will steadily pull you down the rabbit hole. These people aren’t logging in to nazi.com and ravenously looking for content (at least most aren’t).

              It’s served directly to them in mainstream platforms, prepared exactly how they like it. And they’re the first generation to be bombarded by this algorithmic targeting for their entire lives.

              Should adults still be responsible for what they consume and analyzing it critically? Of course. But given we’re in unprecedented territory and this is (at most) their second time voting in a presidential cycle, I’ll give them a mulligan.

              • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                5 months ago

                You really don’t have to consciously consume it. You can literally leave auto-play on YouTube and it will steadily pull you down the rabbit hole. These people aren’t logging in to nazi.com and ravenously looking for content (at least most aren’t).

                maybe if you have degenerative brain damage, or are asleep, otherwise yes, you are making the conscious choice to watch nazis talk about nazi things for 3 hours, that’s literally something you consciously engage with simply by listening to, or even looking at.

                This is why it’s so important to be conscious of the media you’re consuming, in the same way it’s important to be conscious about the products you’re buying and the services you’re using.

                I’ll give them a mulligan.

                look bro, all i’m saying is that you don’t accidentally become a nazi, if i gave you a knife, and told you to murder somebody, and walked away, you wouldn’t do that, you would probably call the police on me because that’s really fucking weird.

                • stickly@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  No, they’re making a conscious choice to use the platform. The content itself is whatever pops up and looks entertaining.

                  If the algorthim shows you 2 center-right videos, 3 hard-right videos, and one nazi rant then are you choosing to be a nazi by watching the center right ones?

                  Its never actually 3 hours of nazi things. Its an otherwise entertaining video making some off color jokes. It’s a streamer going on one politically dubious rant in a 6 hour stream. It’s a weekly podcast talking to “interesting” people; some benign, some funny, some actual problems… It’s about normalizing the conversation and the ideas. Nobody is getting handed a knife.

                  Yeah, there are some people take the red pill and actively go down the conspiracy rabbit hole and watch nazi shit. But I’m not gonna go out of my way to crucify people who have shitty ideas in their head at some point, there are lots of people that have stories of escaping the funnel.

                  Because at the end of the day a vote is just voicing an opinion to most people.

                  I was told tariffs aren’t a bad idea”… “Musk has points that there might be wasteful spending”… “Well Rogan endorsed him haha”…

                  If they were told they’re getting drafted to invade Greenland before they voted, they look at you the same way as the knife guy.

  • SabinStargem@lemmings.world
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    5 months ago

    I don’t think it is young people that are the problem. Recall, it is largely billionaires and elderly statesmen that either supported the coup, or stood aside. Of all people, they should understand the consequences and it is their job to guide the nation. That includes telling people how neat government programs can be.

    Our most influential people either failed to communicate, or are aligned with the plot to some degree. Young folks are too busy slaving away to dedicate time to politics, which requires time, money, and education. Things that society has consistently transferred towards the wealthy, while denying the poor.

      • Rakonat@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        It’s more that Gen Z wants change without putting in effort. They (and millennials too) aren’t voting in primaries at all let alone showing up in non Presidental elections so all parties are putting money and effort into candidates that appeal to older, more conservative voters that actual show up.

        The younger people I work with and interact with on a regular basis that admit they voted for Trump say they didn’t do it because he appealed to them but because they had some protest against Harris or Biden. Dems dropped the ball entirely this election but the majority of voters fail to turn out and prove their desire for change and progressive candidates is anything but talk.

        • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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          5 months ago

          There wasn’t a primary to vote against Harris in though. I’m not bashing you, it’s just that was a mistake IMO.

          • Rakonat@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            There was primary for congressional seats where the actual change Gen Z keeps saying they want will have to come from. And there was basically no participation there nationwide for their generation.

  • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    One would think watching Nazi salutes on inauguration day of a GOP president going blitzkrieg all around the world, would be enough to forget about them reaching the White House again… but, seriously, this is the USA.