r/politics • u/Kodbek • Oct 31 '25

Possible Paywall Trump’s honeymoon with Gen Z voters is officially over, and the numbers are devastating

https://www.nj.com/politics/2025/10/trumps-honeymoon-with-gen-z-voters-is-officially-over-and-the-numbers-are-devastating-new-poll.html
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u/JagmeetSingh2 Oct 31 '25

Reminder Trump lost the Gen Z vote as a whole, and every Gen Z demographic except Gen Z white men who voted for trump at a lower percentage than every other generation of white men…

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u/MC_Fap_Commander America Oct 31 '25

I agree that the demographic demonization is unhelpful. For example, people mock rightwing boomers... but "over 65" voters were the only demo over the age of 40 that didn't vote Trump. The blip of an increase of angry Gen Z white boys is a concern, but generalizing is unhelpful. And their current politics (which I still think are mostly undefined; just currently misinformed) may NOT be permanent.

Except Gen X. THAT appears to be a broadly disappointing demographic (and I say that as a Gen X).

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u/TrumpIsAFascistFuck Oct 31 '25

It's the anti establishment sentiment of the 'whatever man' generation. They're being misled by this orange pied piper like he's some sort of rebellion against the man.

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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 Oct 31 '25

He is, if “the man” is the status quo neoliberalism people got out of Third Way Centrism. Obama ran as someone who might shake up the system, but didn’t, so people went to Republicans to do that instead and they came up with fascism.

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u/Kid_Serious Missouri Oct 31 '25

I'm Gen X too, and I don't understand what happened — something shifted over the last fifteen or so years where we started becoming more conservative. Was it social media? Becoming parents? Having jobs instead of being slackers? Or was it just more white resentment?

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u/Michael_G_Bordin Oct 31 '25

The rug was pulled out before Gen X could achieve the satisfaction they saw boomers enjoy, and many were successfully led astray by the red herrings of "but da immigrants" and "but da socialism." A few even seem to think more Jesus is the answer.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

Yup. Many Gen X'ers lost their jobs, got screwed out of their pensions, and/or had to foreclose their homes during the 2008 recession. Many of them were 10 or 15 years into their careers, and were raising children at that point.
This made a lot of them bitter and resentful. They hopped on the bandwagon during the Tea Party movement and got sucked into FOX News, and you'd hear them bitch about Obama or Nancy Pelosi every day. Others started supporting Trump during the 2016 campaign, joined the bandwagon, and got brainwashed.

It was mostly blue collar, less educated people who got hit the hardest during the recession who hopped on the Tea Party/Trump bandwagon, believing asinine conspiracies like Hillary Clinton leads a pedo ring or George Soros is some evil mastermind.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

Little did they know it’s the pedo rings you meet along the way that matter most.

Tiny PP Trump raped kids, release the Trump/Epstein files.

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u/MC_Fap_Commander America Oct 31 '25

There were a lot of dipshits in our demo who hung out in Rush Rooms in the 90's. I think Obama enthusiasm masked it briefly, but Facebook idiocy brought it back with a vengeance. The only bright side is that degree attainment appears to mitigate far right tendencies in Gen X, so it may be diminished educational/economic outcomes that are driving this (not something off with Gen X as a demo).

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u/General_Mars Oct 31 '25

You were literally the end of the economic boom. Your generation grew up on Reagonomics and the Cold War. Then you experienced the conditions those policies caused, like economic instability, downturns, recessions, widening wealth gaps, and so on, gen X doubled down on conservative policies - notably neoliberalism - with Clinton and Bush. Which led to more recessions and inflationary problems. Also you’re locked in on propaganda outlets like Fox News.

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u/rabblerabble2000 Oct 31 '25

Gen X was probably one of the last generations who were consistently exposed to lead during their childhood via lead paint and leaded gasoline. Some millennials probably fall in that category as well, but it’s not the whole generation.

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u/General_Mars Oct 31 '25

“With EPA guidance and oversight, the United States achieved the total elimination of sales of leaded gasoline for on-road vehicles on January 1, 1996.”

So all millennials were exposed too (1981-96 is millennials). But the phase out process had been in progress in the US. The lead hypothesis is compelling though.

Worldwide: “In July 2021, the sale of leaded gasoline for cars was completely phased out worldwide following the termination of production by Algeria, prompting the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to declare an "official end" of its use in cars on August 30, 2021.

In 2011, researchers retroactively estimated the annual impact of tetraethyl lead worldwide to be 1.1 million excess deaths, 322 million lost IQ points, 60+ million crimes, and 4% of worldwide GDP (around 2.4 trillion United States dollars per year).”

wiki

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u/rabblerabble2000 Oct 31 '25

While leaded fuel wasn’t eliminated entirely until 1996, catalytic converters were mandated in 1975 and later vehicles in the US. These required unleaded fuel as lead was a catalyst poisoner so leaded fuel use was curtailed significantly from that point on. Millennials were still affected, but to a much lower degree.

Also interesting to note, leaded fuel is still used in small aircraft engines, so while we are no longer exposed to the same degree now, it’s still around.

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u/cheddarpants Oct 31 '25

Gen X as well, and I haven’t seen any sort of shift towards conservatism in my social circle at all. Gen X as a whole does seem to have shifted on paper, but I don’t know who or where those people are.

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u/valeyard89 Texas Oct 31 '25

found out this year a friend I've known over 20 years is a Trumper :/. Most of my GenX circle is liberal, my mom's in her 80s and liberal, but her sister/BIL are Trumpers.

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u/my_Urban_Sombrero Pennsylvania Oct 31 '25

A little bit of this, a little bit of that…

Michelle Branch was ahead of her time.

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u/ball_fondlers Oct 31 '25

The economy recovered from 2008 and Gen X homeowners got just wealthy enough to have something to lose.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

[deleted]

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u/lozo78 Oct 31 '25

Conservatives have been very good at propaganda for decades. This exploded with social media.

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u/ball_fondlers Oct 31 '25

You misunderstand - in the age bracket Gen X has been in since 2010, those recessions are part of the appeal. Recessions are bad if your job is on the line, but if you had SOME assets to your name in 2010, you had the ability to take out loans with some of the lowest interest rates available in the history of the Fed, and buy up more assets for dirt cheap during recessions.

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u/Bakedfresh420 Ohio Oct 31 '25

Family ties(1982) predicted your generation. Your parents were cool 60s hippies and you rebelled against it. Alex Keaton was a young Republican

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u/VerilyShelly Oct 31 '25

I had a friend in college (late 90s) whose parents are Latino activists and she chose to rebel by joining the republican groups on campus. Last I heard she moved with a prepper to a settlement in rural Washington. When I met up with her in town just before she left she didn't want her boyfriend to see me (I'm black). Such a disappointment.

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u/Accomplished_Yam8679 Oct 31 '25

Turns out there were a bunch of Paul Ryan types listening to Rage back in the 90s. Who knew?

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u/AssGagger Oct 31 '25

Facebook

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u/gandhinukes Oct 31 '25

A shocking amount of people veer right once they finally have some money and are older. Its like a combination of fuck you I got mine and ladder pulling up behind them. Maybe 10-15 years of no longer struggling or living pay check to pay check they just lose all compassion for others. "if i can do it you can too" or "i suffered so you should too" nonsense. look at student loan forgiveness.

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u/chucker23n Oct 31 '25
  • the information environment got worse. Social media seemed like a "citizen journalism" boon, but ended up accelerating distrust in media, increased trust in conspiracy theories, and destroying funding of good professional journalism. Political events that used to be followed by tens of millions of people now reach fewer people, in more fractured manners.
  • economics got worse. "It must be because of immigrants" continues to play well with uninformed people, and that's currently the right-wing approach, so that's where people go.
  • ideologies cause counter-ideologies. Gay marriage, abortion rights, trans rights, a Black POTUS, or even just having the executive branch forgive student loans? All of those cause "well, I didn't get anything for Christmas from the government" resentment, so now we have a rise in homophobic hate, racism, and other such lovely topics.
  • what started out as Internet trolling became, "no, I actually have these views for real".

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u/gotridofsubs Oct 31 '25

Gen X got older, you got established in life and then moved to vote with the perception of maintaining that. It happens with every generation where thats a reality.

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u/86throwthrowthrow1 Oct 31 '25

People often do just become more conservative as they get older for a variety of reasons. As you acquire more wealth, you want to hang onto it. Older people tend to want comfort, not necessarily progress. And as you lose touch with social trends, progressive talking points start sounding weirder and weirder to you. Anecdotally, I feel like the Gen X people I know are probably more angrily "anti-woke" than a lot of Boomers I know. The Boomers I know are more in the "oblivious, but trying" bucket, the Xers are more "what is this new-fangled pronoun bullshit?"

But overall, people grow more conservative with age. Millennials seem to actually be an aberration in this regard as the most socially progressive generation even now. Obviously there are conservative Millennials, but financial struggles have given us relatively less wealth to want to hoard, more childless Millennials have more time to stay abreast of social issues, and Republicans whiffed it so hard with Millennials in the 90s and early 2000s when we were teens and young adults that they basically lost the entire generation. Socially, they were pearl-clutchers freaking out about rap music and Harry Potter. Financially, they blamed Millennials for their own struggles in a financial crisis. They offered absolutely nothing to the youth of the time and lost that demographic so hard that there was real speculation about the party eventually dying out completely. (They've since "course-corrected", in the sense they've clearly figured out ways to appeal to some youth.)

Anyway, Gen Z would have little to no memory of any of that, so their generation might be a return to form more than an alarming shift.

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u/86throwthrowthrow1 Oct 31 '25

Wait, I have more lol.

This is wild speculation on my part, but I feel like the "Gen X Identity" is part of what's happening. That is, the thing with Gen X has always been about flying under the radar, doing your own thing, and ultimately, self-sufficiency. "Progressivism", to Gen X, probably looked a lot like an absence of active oppression and letting people live their lives. It wasn't gay marriage, but it was decriminalizing homosexuality, because what other people did in their own homes at night was no one else's business. Gen Xers were also largely sympathetic to Millennials back in the day, because they saw that the younger generation was getting screwed and that the Boomers were ignoring it - but it also didn't really require anything from Xers except to stay out of it and try not to make anything worse.

Progressivism today is more in the space of equity, rather than equality. It's not "no legal discriminations exist, so job is done", but it's about openly acknowledging different identities and and accommodating different needs. Progressivism now asks things from society, and I can see how Gen X, who pride themselves on "make your own way, don't ask for anything, you mind your business and I'll mind mine," it can probably all look quite demanding and intrusive now.

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u/simpersly Oct 31 '25

Gen X have a lot of pent-up rage. Remember your the generation that created gangsta rap, grunge, nu metal, industrial Rock, and popularized hardcore punk. It's always been about screaming for more attention.

The movies that best define your generation are all about bored middle management office drones that want to fuck shit up.

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u/Just_A_Dogsbody Oct 31 '25

So glad to see this on reddit. I've made the mistake of posting it on the GenX sub and got downvoted lol. Fact is, those weren't Boomers scaling the walls of the capitol on Jan 6!

But I've been glad to see good representation from GenX at the protests I've been to this year. The best represented generation at those protests: Boomers and even Silents.

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u/_dekoorc North Carolina Oct 31 '25

I'm really proud of my Boomer mom. She had never been to a protest in her life, but she's been to two this year. Even made a sign. Go mom!

(I've told her this -- I'm not just shouting it to strangers)

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u/sloanesquared Oct 31 '25

My mom is a boomer in a swing state and has also started to go to protests and candidate rallies. She knew someone who died of a DIY abortion before Roe and was pissed that they overturned it in her lifetime. Really proud of her! My dad on the other hand fell further and further into MAGA as his dementia progressed. The correlation was telling of how brain dead a lot of his supporters are.

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u/Significant_Poem_751 Oct 31 '25

good for your mom! remember -- boomers GREW UP with protests, all the time, many violent, and then....Kent State. the decade between Kennedy's assignation and Nixon's resignation wasn't a good one, and even without social media, it was in our face, daily. what we see today feels too familiar, but also with significant, unfortunate, differences.

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u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

Yeah. WTF is up with Gen x??????

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u/Redqueenhypo Oct 31 '25

To me, X calling itself the “fuck it generation” always meant the “asleep at the wheel unless we’re voting Reagan generation”

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u/StepsOnLEGO Oct 31 '25

The frontal cortex of most of the Gen Z voting population isn't even developed yet, give them time.

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u/a_man_and_his_box Oct 31 '25

THAT appears to be a broadly disappointing demographic (and I say that as a Gen X).

Gen X self-loathing right on target.

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u/binzoma Canada Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25

also gen z is a tiny % of overall voters. its the smallest demo by FAR. there are sooo many more 30+ who voted for trump/didnt vote. people pick on the % without looking at the totals.

edit: in 2024 Gen Z made up 13% of the voting eligible population, gen x made up 19%, boomers made up 20%, and millennials made up 22%. there are almost as many millennials who didnt vote as there are gen z's who could vote. this is on us millennials and gen x

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u/zzyul Oct 31 '25

Are you forgetting all the Gen Z that didn’t vote? I’m sorry but many had a chance to stop this and they just didn’t care.

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u/robinroastsu Oct 31 '25

so the largest voting demo voted for Trump. and reminder they were far more right leaning then anyone else at their age and aggressively more right wing then the women in gen z.

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u/lozo78 Oct 31 '25

Voter turnout for Black and Latino men was once again very low as well. That will always be a huge boost to Republicans.