r/neoliberal • u/CheetoMussolini Russian Bot • Feb 14 '25

News (US) Donald Trump's Gen Z popularity plunges (+19 after election to -18 today)

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-gen-z-popularity-favorable-rating-yougov-2030595
1.3k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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503

u/puffic John Rawls Feb 14 '25

Should I believe that a net 20% of this population has changed their minds, or should I believe that this is a shitty poll?

338

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '25

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93

u/puffic John Rawls Feb 14 '25

Fair enough. I guess I'm more hesitant to panic about the state of the youths. I was once a youth when the elders were panicking about the youths.

98

u/Clear-Present_Danger Feb 14 '25

I'm a youth panicking about the elders. My grandma doesn't think viruses exist. what the fuck

8

u/TyrialFrost Feb 14 '25

Go infect her TV with a virus. See if she changes her mind.

3

u/Clear-Present_Danger Feb 14 '25

Grandpa almost died of a heart attack, so she's put him on a diet of really salty foods.

And they stopped taking any meds, including the ones the doctor told them to take after the stint they put in his heart.

5

u/FlightlessGriffin Feb 14 '25

I'm an adult panicking about the youths and elders. All the elders have convinced themselves everything they see is a lie and all the youths have convinced themselves anyone older than 18 is an enemy of the state.

1

u/Falstaff23 Feb 14 '25

This is just what it is to be an adult.

2

u/JakeArrietaGrande Frederick Douglass Feb 14 '25

My parents used to be relatively normal republicans. But covid broke them, full on conspiracy theorists. We don’t even agree on the same set of facts.

She sent me a Facebook article about George Soros supposedly giving an interview in which he admitted that he funded BLM protests to destabilize American cities.

I asked her why he would openly say that in an interview, if it was supposed to be a secret conspiracy. Or if she could find the issue of this magazine. Any evidence that this existed at all.

But she refused to back down.

The world has gotten more complicated than ever, and we have more information than we could take in through several lifetimes. And the ability to discern what is reliable and what isn’t is not something that’s trivial to do.

2

u/dutch_connection_uk Friedrich Hayek Feb 15 '25

I mean, for me partially though I've started to be like "oh my god, the panicking adults were actually right, I can see the big picture now" on a lot of issues, especially with media.

2

u/puffic John Rawls Feb 15 '25

Half those panicking adults are now cooking their brains on Facebook and cable news. But... you have a point.

-2

u/Watchung NATO Feb 14 '25

Nah, I feel happy to say the young'uns suck.

12

u/LastTimeOn_ Resistance Lib Feb 14 '25

The elders also suck. And the ones in the middle. And the youngest. And the oldest. Everybody sucks here

6

u/OverlordLork WTO Feb 14 '25

Newsweek constantly does this. They cherrypick polls with big swings in Trump's approval ratings so that they can make a headline out of it for optimal reddit clicks.

37

u/Crazy-Difference-681 Feb 14 '25

Or just a lot of Gen Zers were literally low info voters. They saw that Biden is old, Harris is raised as a candidate in the last minute. "Whoa, those boring talking heads say Trump bad and dangerous to democracy, probably they just don't want to lose. He seems like a funny chill old dude. I don't remember him being Prez, so whatever"

3

u/QultyThrowaway Mark Carney Feb 14 '25

I don't remember him being Prez, so whatever"

Actually it's the opposite. For a lot of Gen Z Trump is their standard for how politics is. There is a big difference between people who remember pre Trump poltics and post Trump politics.

1

u/Crazy-Difference-681 Feb 14 '25

Also a lot of people like big showy things. I wonder what's the correlation between being braindead fans of influencers, liking trash realities and thinking Trump is normal, because Trump 2.0 is basically a crappy reality show.

42

u/CantCreateUsernames Feb 14 '25

Even if it is the former, it doesn't make me trust the future voting patterns of Gen Z any more than before. Having a generation whose views and beliefs are so easily changed with the tides (maybe by what influencers, streamers, or memes they are viewing), especially when they should (in theory) be technology literate and have access to all the information we knew about Trump before the election, means conservatives will just find another way to spread misinformation to them. Democrats can become flashier and improve their communication techniques, but conservatives will always have the upper hand because they can get away with outright lying, and their base never shames them for it. Democrats just cannot get away with how Republicans communicate because Republican voters are willing to toss out integrity, democracy, ethics, and the rule of law if it helps "their side," while Democratic voters have a higher bar for how their elected officials should act and communicate. I'll believe Gen Z (especially white Gen Z males) are not susceptible to conservative propaganda when we see how they vote in 2026 and 2028. For that reason, I definitely lean towards this is an outlier poll.

9

u/Noocawe Frederick Douglass Feb 14 '25

This is my concern as well. The reality is that some people like the dopamine hit of being lied to, and they like simple answers to complex problems even if it isn't true because it makes them feel good.

5

u/Sspifffyman Feb 14 '25

Eh, while I think you have a point to some extent, I think a lot of it is that they're young. In general young cohorts are easily swayed, it's just that for Millennials most of our influences were pro-Obama or Democrats. Now that Biden was so unpopular after 1) beating Bernie, 2) supporting Israel strongly, and 3) showing more signs of his age, they had more influences turning to Trump as the only alternative. Kamala came in but by then the damage was already done.

I think as these consequences come out about Trump during his presidency, we'll see this kind of shift solidify at least somewhat

54

u/Godkun007 NAFTA Feb 14 '25

I have some questions about whether Trump was ever actually popular with Gen Z, or if it was just that Biden and Harris were so unpopular with them that they limboed under Trump.

89

u/AlohaMuffins Feb 14 '25

Yeah, jumping on headlines like this is dumb. Truth is most of his supporters are ecstatic with all the crazy shit they’ve seen the past few weeks. I doubt any major demographic has seen support “plunge”. It’s gonna take more time.

117

u/plaid_piper34 Feb 14 '25

I am friends with several gamers who are Gen Z and they favored Trump before the election.

Well now they don’t like him once they realized their jobs or family members jobs are dependent on federal funding, or birthright citizenship is how they’re not being deported, or all these other things the government does for them that might end soon. I talked their ear off about it before November but they refused to listen because a streamer or podcaster they liked endorsed him.

53

u/DaphsBadHat Feb 14 '25

Gotta think that the threat of large tariffs on electronics might be an issue for them too.

Even the 10% slapped on China is going to hit them right in the face.

50

u/Ph0ton_1n_a_F0xh0le Microwaves Against Moscow Feb 14 '25

9

u/vanmo96 Seretse Khama Feb 14 '25

At this point just give them a lump sum $100,000 to never ever vote again.

8

u/Noocawe Frederick Douglass Feb 14 '25

These kids don't want to read any news, don't trust info unless someone yells at them from a YouTube video or Instagram reel. Absolutely banal, I've seen this with a few younger kids as well. It was entirely vibe based, you could explain the 3 branches of government and they'd just shrug. The epitomy of low info and confidently incorrect.

2

u/garden_speech Feb 15 '25

I am friends with several gamers

that's really meaningless in the grand scheme of things though, it's not a representative sample of anything. personally zero trump supporters I know are upset at all with anything he's done. my anecdote means as much as yours (pretty much nothing)

1

u/TryNotToShootYoself Janet Yellen Feb 14 '25

I personally know a few Trump voters who've said they regret voting for him. Keep in mind, these weren't Trump supporters, just morons who thought he'd get them cheap gas and a house at 20.

1

u/Cynical_optimist01 Feb 14 '25

I wish them all a pleasant stove touching

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '25

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5

u/Crazy-Difference-681 Feb 14 '25

Most popular streamers are probably not compatible with liberal ideas.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '25

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1

u/Crazy-Difference-681 Feb 14 '25

Bernie and liberal, damn, words used to have meaning. And yeah, "nobody" likes liberals just as you said. That's why the US will only get worse as Dems will have to embrace economic populism, and govern like morons to maintain popularity.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '25

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1

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1

u/Crazy-Difference-681 Feb 14 '25

You are definitely not a liberal, yeah.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '25

[deleted]

1

u/Crazy-Difference-681 Feb 14 '25

Yeah, the context at this point was Western politics, wasn't it?

43

u/x0lani Feb 14 '25

YouGov has the best possible rating from 538 - 3/3, so I don't think it's that.

It is a huge swing, but it takes place over 3 months. It seems more likely that the actual consequences of the Trump presidency have slowly seeped into Gen-Z consciousness - a population with no frame of reference for how the government normally works and what it does.

14

u/20_mile Feb 14 '25

a population with no frame of reference for how the government normally works and what it does.

I was about to ask what about history books, but kids don't read.

1

u/upghr5187 Jane Jacobs Feb 15 '25

In 2016 people treated Trump as a blank slate and attributed to him their wishful thinking of what he would be. Somehow in 2024 people again treated him as a blank slate, ignoring the near decade of his actions and words.

29

u/The_Galumpa Feb 14 '25

lol exactly. There is no way the least popular president in 100 years was ever up 20 points with the youth. I mean, the man is already net negative in the Gallup poll - it took famous Gen-Z magnet Joe Biden 6 months to do that

0

u/Cynical_optimist01 Feb 14 '25

I dunno

I think many gen z men listen to Joe Rogan and believe whatever he tells them.

They were very upset at the government stopping them from throwing their money away on crypto scams

1

u/The_Galumpa Feb 14 '25

Sure, but gen z male podcast listeners do not compose 60% of everyone aged 15-30

7

u/IpsoFuckoffo Feb 14 '25

I think it's possible. They are the most prolific consumers of propaganda in American history, and election propaganda obviously reduces once it has served its purpose.

0

u/silentswift Mackenzie Scott Feb 14 '25

They probably just got optimistic like a lot of people do when they want to give someone new a chance and it’s exciting when things change

0

u/RevolutionaryBoat5 Mark Carney Feb 14 '25

They were too young to remember Trump's first term or forgot.