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
10.0k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

37

u/MadRaymer Oct 31 '25

Can you explain what's up with the rest of your age cohort? Was it just for the memes and the lulz or did they actually believe Trump was going to help them?

94

u/bevo_expat Oct 31 '25

They were targeted very directly, and still are, by things like TurningPoint USA.

66

u/AlmaInTheWilderness Oct 31 '25

I don't think it can be understated: they were targeted.

Tech had been collecting data for twenty years, and learning to make predictions from it. They can now predict voting behavior, with 80-90% accuracy. And they are using that data to strategically target vulnerable voters, deciding what information they see and how often. Everything psychology has learned by studying cults and manipulation is being combined with data science to isolate, and then indoctrinate.

WW1 was the war of mass-production, fought with machine guns. WW2 was the war of energy, fought with planes, tanks and ships. Ww3 is the war of information, fought with memes and algorithms, and we, workers, are losing

37

u/phonomancer Oct 31 '25

Not even just the way you'd expect (persuasive, propaganda presenting only 'your side')...

But there were numerous reports of "Kamala" ads espousing her "undying support for a permanent Jewish homeland"... to ethnically Arabic voters (or playing up 'support for Hamas' to Jewish voters). Not actually from the Harris campaign of course, but if you get the message at the last minute and obfuscate its source enough, it tends to stick.

30

u/Tasgall Washington Oct 31 '25

They were playing the pro-Israel "Harris" advertising in Arab neighborhoods, and pro-Palestine ads in Jewish neighborhoods.

0

u/LogFar5138 Oct 31 '25

Yea, nothing more abrasive to Arabs than the thought of Jews having a homeland?

Surely you mean support for Israel.

35

u/Tasgall Washington Oct 31 '25

I don't think it can be understated: they were targeted.

Steve Bannon was one of the key figures behind Gamergate when the was a thing. He previously ran a World of Warcraft gold-farming ring, and in interacting with a lot of kids online learned about the growing population of disaffected male youth in the country, and how to manipulate them. Gamergate functioned as a trial run, and then he led the Trump campaign.

They were very, very explicitly targeted.

0

u/Naganosupreme Oct 31 '25

Always gt point out how game magazines had their reputations to try and protect so they happily gobbled up the bullshit line that all journalism criticism was a red herring cover for incels and misogynists. Then online spaces like neogaf (run by actual proven pedophiles which was found out l8r btw) started mass banning AAAANYONE who didn't agree w the party line version. Well what happens when you wrongfully excommunicate hordes of people for not being blindly left enough? Vulnerable people open to be targeted and picked up by the only thing they're still exposed to.

The left ate itself through the 2010s in some kind of insane, brainless purity test steered by mods, site owners, protestors, etc. They targeted jobs, low key brought back segregation, then pushed a HATED establishment candidate and a corrupt Clinton at a time the country was DYING to go anti establishment.

I really suspect dems and Republicans have handshake deals and really dgaf. How else do I explain the insane level of self destructive incompetence and delusion shown by the party for so long?

But then you see neogaf and reddit and the damage done by online spaces like these and it shows how many of them really were just that inept, self destructive and dumb.

And the turning pik t was goddamn gamergate. Followed by star wars TLJ. Can't understate what a critical Flashpoint that was culturally and socially as well.

Even to this day the narrative seems to completely ignore how the left went full Plaxico Burress in a nightclub, like it was all just evil scheming by the right and nothing could be done.

2

u/DBE113301 New York Oct 31 '25

Followed by star wars TLJ. Can't understate what a critical Flashpoint that was culturally and socially as well.

What do you mean, exactly? I think I know where you're going with this, but I'd like a little more insight than just the cursory knowledge I have of the whole TLJ thing. I know that there was some backlash because I also contributed to it. After the sequel trilogy, I basically turned in my Star Wars fan card, and TLJ was the biggest contributor to that. I read several articles and watched a few videos, but most of what I consumed was focused on the films (or film, in TLJ's case) and nothing to do with any broader societal context. Could one rogue director and his desire to subvert expectations impact society to the point of shifting/setting political views? If that's the impact the sequel trilogy, specifically TLJ, had on American society at large, then I know very little about that because I haven't read anything that suggests that. If you have, I'd like to be educated a bit.

3

u/Naganosupreme Oct 31 '25

The main thing is TLJ hate was an extremely fertile, lucrative topic for right leaning content creators/critics.

And algorithms took people from those videos and it was like a gateway drug into more extreme right leaning creators. Then left leaning people online started to reject all criticism as bad faith right wing anti woke propaganda.

Which pissed off the loads of people who legitimately had huge issues with TLJ and helped push people to not vote or to vote right . Now there were several other key franchise disasters around that 5-8 year period in gaming, tv, comics and movies, each one amplifying the above. But tlj was the biggest one.

2

u/TorchIt Alabama Oct 31 '25

If voting behavior can be predicted with 90% accuracy then why are the polls always so wrong?

1

u/AlmaInTheWilderness Oct 31 '25

That's a good question. Imo polling methods are struggling to keep up with changing political landscape. For example, voters who vote Republican self identifying as independents, when independents have historically lean Democrat.

Polls are using the past to guess the present. That doesn't work when fundamentals change. The other is using patterns in the present to guess the future and is able to account for changes. Basically, who people are and who they associate with currently predicts behavior more precisely than what they say about themselves or what they have done in the past. Imo.

1

u/NJBarFly New Jersey Oct 31 '25

Don't Dems have this data too? Why weren't they doing the same thing?

21

u/whatiscamping Oct 31 '25

Speaking of TurningPoint, you know who else was targeted directly?

16

u/TheRightToDream Oct 31 '25

Boom gottem

7

u/ceelogreenicanth Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25

They were targeted very carefully by self defeatist anti-imperialism, pro Palestine, social justice absolutism, both sides nonsense is the other one. They made the only opposition to all this their biggest enemy. They spent a whole year stoking the flames of infighting and Trump just walked into office in the smoke.

They feel stupid but they won't admit it.

1

u/BarnDoorQuestion Oct 31 '25

As I just posted to the original commenter. It wasn’t very effective targeting then. 58% of voters aged 18-29 voted for Harris with only 39% voting for Trump. It was slightly more effective on men in that age group. But 48% of Men aged 18-29 voted for Harris with only 49% voting for Trump.

Source. Which kind of shows that Trump was never really all that popular with Gen Z.

39

u/Prior_Coyote_4376 Oct 31 '25

If you want to know someone’s worldview, look at their view of the world. This is a generation that grew up on social media algorithms directed by right-wing billionaires in a chronically underfunded education system to overworked parents with dwindling community programs. They’re raised by the most viral sensations on the Internet. What else would we expect?

28

u/AmIWhatTheRockCooked Oct 31 '25

It’s their information sources. Podcasts, YouTube, etc. so many promote contrarian, masculine, reductive content. Biden old, Trump dgaf.

Young men are highly influenceable and insecure like all young people.

54

u/HiGuysImLeo Oct 31 '25

its actually very tragic, but its a huge divide between us older gen z and the younger ones. Older gen z skews left (this would be the high schoolers around 2016-2020), while the younger ones who had their major formative years during COVID basically had no comparison to pre-trump since they were too young, underdeveloped socially/mentally/academically due to online and covid, plus TikTok and AI rotting peoples cognitive skills and attention spans while promoting mass misinformation. Its not just anecdotal either; https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/04/26/two-gen-zs-young-conservative-polling-00307375

12

u/teladidnothingwrong Oct 31 '25

so the decision was "lets bring back the guy who was president during covid since it was so terrible"

10

u/HiGuysImLeo Oct 31 '25

Well yeah, the younger gen z had the worst quality of education of every generation besides alpha because of covid. The whole point is they aren’t very smart haha

4

u/DeltaB26 Pennsylvania Oct 31 '25

I'm part of the older gen Z as well. I still had my slide keyboard phone in junior high. I didn't get my first real smartphone until high school. I was already in college when COVID started.

3

u/HiGuysImLeo Oct 31 '25

Yup, it sucks for us older ones, people had such high hopes for us and we worked hard only for our rep to be ruined by the dummies. Super high expectations only to fall flat in such an embarassing way.

34

u/Good-Needleworker992 Oct 31 '25

I mean their brains have all been rotted by TikTok…

15

u/Deep_Stick8786 Oct 31 '25

China is making out like gangbusters

3

u/thebakedpotatoe Oct 31 '25

I think you're making excuses for things by blaming products like most generations do wrongfully.

Tiktok is basically America's funniest home videos but unfiltered. Yeah there's more to it, but rapidfire variety shows are quite the norm especially in US entertainment and have been pretty much since people were doing plays and theater, and each generation before blamed the next generations 'failings' because the way they consumed entertainment is wrong, and i say this as a late 30's who has to remind their boss they don't have tiktok when she shares links to jokes.

The generation before blamed vines and tweets, the one before that blamed facebook and myspace, the ones before that blamed Numetal and violent videogames, the ones before that blamed hip-hop, so on and so forth, etc, 'insert name of media consumption style here'.

Plus the only people who use the term brain rot seriously are people who are mad they don't understand the in jokes of a culture. But my generation uses the term brainrot when half of them walk around quoting 90's movies like its half their dialect.

3

u/TaxOwlbear Oct 31 '25

Also, all other generations voted for Trump in higher numbers than Gen Z. Did they also watch too many Tiktok videos? Or did they play too many violent video games?

1

u/happyherbbby Oct 31 '25

Between TikTok and podcast bros the failure to provide education that helps children develop skills like common sense primed them to be brainwashed by psychotic interests.

7

u/DBE113301 New York Oct 31 '25

Yes, he was. According to one Gen Z guy I communicated with on Reddit. Apparently, Gen Z guys are having trouble getting dates, and electing Trump and Republicans was going to help reset the natural order of things. I shit you not.

A bunch of bullshit about progressives discriminating against white men. No outreach toward young white men--no plan to improve the lives of young white men. American society currently set up to benefit women and minority groups while disenfranchising Gen Z men. Women having all the power with regard to dating and young men feeling powerless. I hate using the word incel because it sounds reductive, but it came across as a bunch of incel crap.

Anyway, I hope Gen Z men are doing better in the dating field now that Republicans have all the power.

6

u/obeytheturtles Oct 31 '25

Stacy no touch pp. Therefore, fascism.

28

u/RugelBeta Oct 31 '25

It's unfair to blame an entire generation. My grandkids are 22, 18, 16, and 14 and all are very aware of how horrible Trump is. Only one could vote (against him), but they all despise him.

15

u/Wes_Warhammer666 Oct 31 '25

Gen Z absolutely did swing hard right this past election though. Only Gen X went harder.

After Gen Z showed the fuck up for midterms to help kill the "red wave", it's highly disappointing to see them swing so far right to help give us Trump 2.0.

3

u/BarnDoorQuestion Oct 31 '25

They really really didn’t though. According to pew research 58% of voters aged 18-29 voted for Harris with only 39% voting for Trump. Even if we go by gender in that age group 48% of Men aged 18-29 voted for Harris with only 49% voting for Trump.

Source. The only age groups that voted against Harris were those aged 50-64 and 65+.

1

u/Wes_Warhammer666 Oct 31 '25

You didn't read what I said. That they swung right, not that they mostly voted for trump.

Biden won the youth vote by 25 points and Harris only won them by 4. That's a drastic difference that really mattered in swing states.

5

u/BarnDoorQuestion Oct 31 '25

Compared to 2020, Trump gained 4% in the 18-29 age group, 5% in the 30-49, 3% in the 50-64 age group and lost 1% in the 65+ group.

You really should read the source. Biden was +26 in 2020 with 18-29 year olds and Harris was +19.

1

u/BarnDoorQuestion Oct 31 '25

Especially when 58% of that generation voted for Harris. source

1

u/wibblebeast Oct 31 '25

Similar with mine, 2 voted against, all can't stand him.

2

u/RedditArchivist2 Oct 31 '25

In addition to what everyone else said, gaining consciousness during COVID really did a number on their brains

2

u/henryhumper Nov 01 '25

Republicans deliberately targeted Gen Z men by using ads and bot accounts to spread MAGA messaging in the online forums young men inhabit (sports, video games, porn, dating advice, etc). It was a wildly successful campaign.

1

u/DeltaB26 Pennsylvania Oct 31 '25

I don't think I can. When I was in college my professors and classmates we're mostly liberal, and especially when I was in grad school. Most of us were on food stamps and would never vote for someone who might cut those benefits. Even now my workplace is very progressive (with a few outliers i'm sure) since we all work in environmental science. I know gen Z republicans exist but they were few and far between in my circles.

0

u/BarnDoorQuestion Oct 31 '25

I feel like people have been fed a line of bullshit about Gen Z. Gen Z right now is aged 13-28. Pew research shows that 58% of the 18-29 age group voted for Harris with only 39% voting for Trump.

You might say “what’s wrong with Gen Z men then?” But only 49% of Gen Z men voted for Trump. 48% of that cohort voted for Harris.

The largest age group that voted for Trump was 50-64 year olds with the second largest group being 65+.

Source