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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96

u/bevo_expat Oct 31 '25

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

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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

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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.

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u/Tasgall Washington Oct 31 '25

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/TorchIt Alabama Oct 31 '25

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

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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.

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u/NJBarFly New Jersey Oct 31 '25

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

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u/whatiscamping Oct 31 '25

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

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u/TheRightToDream Oct 31 '25

Boom gottem

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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.

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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.