NYT Columnist and Pollster Unpack Shocking Data Showing Young Voters Fleeing the Party
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| Trump's appearances on numerous podcasts that are popular with young men have been credited as a major reason why he won their support and thus the election. (Impaulsive YouTube channel) - Image from: foxnews |
New York Times columnist Ezra Klein has raised a stark warning for Democrats, pointing to fresh data that reveals Generation Z may be the most conservative cohort in decades—a seismic shift that’s shattering long-held party assumptions about youth support. In a Tuesday podcast episode of "The Ezra Klein Show" titled "Democrats Need to Face Why Trump Won," Klein sat down with David Shor, head of data science at Blue Rose Research, to dissect why President Donald Trump’s return to power signals a crumbling Democratic grip on younger voters, particularly White men.
The pair pored over charts, including one labeled "2024 Democratic Support by Age – Split by Race and Gender," where Shor highlighted a jarring trend: among 18-year-olds, women of color were the only demographic group Kamala Harris won, while Trump edged out victories among nonwhite men. Klein called one finding “shocking,” noting it flies in the face of a core Democratic belief—that young people would reliably tilt left. “If we knew anything about Donald Trump eight years ago, it was that young people didn’t like him,” Klein said. “Republicans had been throwing away young people for generations to run up margins among seniors. But in this chart, 75-year-old White men supported Kamala Harris at a significantly higher rate than 20-year-old White men.”
Shor agreed, calling it “a real shift” and the most surprising change he’s seen in four years. “Young people have gone from being the most progressive generation since the Baby Boomers, maybe even more so, to potentially the most conservative we’ve experienced in 50 to 60 years,” he said. The data expert zeroed in on what he dubbed “the scariest chart in this entire presentation,” showing an unprecedented gender gap among those under 30. “Eighteen-year-old men were 23 percentage points more likely to support Trump than 18-year-old women,” Shor explained, a divide he called “completely unprecedented in American politics.”
Klein and Shor spotlighted a graphic with vertical yellow bars underscoring how young White men spurned Harris far more than their 75-year-old counterparts, a stark reversal of expectations. While Shor cautioned it’s too early to pinpoint why, he noted similar patterns in Canada, the U.K., and Norway, suggesting a global trend. “There’s a lot of research to do here, but it’s striking,” he said, adding that the “Democratic young men problem” is “underrated” because “the actual numbers are a lot worse than people think.”
Klein speculated on cultural drivers, from the #MeToo movement to the rise of the Manosphere, suggesting “there’s a sense the Democratic Party is becoming much more a pro-women party and, in some ways, sort of anti-young men,” shaping their political views. Shor leaned toward “broader cultural shifts,” possibly fueled by gender-segregated online spaces. The discussion turned to Trump’s podcast blitz on platforms popular with young men, credited as a key to his electoral edge.
The numbers spell trouble for Democrats, who long banked on a rising youth-driven majority. “Even as the idea of the demographic Democratic majority got discredited in 2016 and 2020, Democrats believed young voters were eventually going to save them,” Klein said. “They thought if Trump couldn’t keep racking up seniors, and Millennials and Gen Z hit voting power, that’d be the end of this Republican Party. That is just completely false—it might be the beginning of this Republican Party.” Shor, reflecting on his own past optimism, admitted, “I was one of those liberals four years ago, and it seems I was wrong. The future has a way of surprising us.”
As Democrats reel, Klein’s takeaway is blunt: “Democrats are getting destroyed now among young voters,” a reality that demands a reckoning far beyond old narratives.