Democrats: Don’t Take Gen Z for Granted
A protest against former President Trump in New York City. Photo by Chris Montgomery.
Joe Biden’s presidential victory brought a flurry of similar headlines: “Gen Z continues Millennial progressive streak,” “Generation Z is The Most Progressive Generation,” “The Right’s Lost Generation, Gen. Z...”
In the 2020 presidential election, 65% of young voters voted for President Joe Biden compared to the only 31% who voted for the former president Donald Trump. Despite their popular perception as liberal, millennials only favored Biden by 7% in 2020. This phenomenon of young people leaning to the left is a fairly new one: in the 2000 presidential election, 18 to 29-year-olds were 50/50 for Bush and Gore. The margin by which Gen Z favored Biden in 2020 is unprecedented—and it is being treated as proof that this generation’s coming of age poses an imminent threat to the Republican Party.
Democrats have fumbled time and time again overlooking groups whose vote they depend on, yet take for granted while campaigning. In 2016, Trump’s narrow victory of 22,748 votes in Wisconsin was integral to his Electoral College win. Asian Americans of voting age in the state amounted to over three times that. But Hillary Clinton’s campaign did not reach out to them, nor did she attend the only national AAPI presidential forum in 2016. These oversights, not just with Asian Americans but with several demographics and regions arguably cost the Democrats the presidency.
Democrats are heading down a similar path with Generation Z—their bold projections about the 67 million Americans born between 1997 and 2012 likely to not bode well for the party in the future. The Gen Z vote in 2020 may be a stronger indication of young people’s ubiquitous disdain for Donald Trump’s political brand than their enduring embrace of the Democratic party.
In 2020, young voters voiced that Biden was never their first choice, many of them instead opting for progressives like Bernie Sanders over Biden, a party insider. Rather, young voters recognized Biden as the candidate “likeliest to beat Trump,” in spite of their disillusionment with the former Vice President. Such was the message of grassroots group “Settle for Biden,” which reached 73% of Gen Z during the 2020 election cycle via their Instagram account. Sam Weinberg, 19-year-old founder of “Settle for Biden” and former backer of Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, described their platform to be “a combination of sardonic millennial and Gen Z humor combined with...you know, substantive policy proposals.” Weinberg said that when it became clear that Biden would win the Democratic nomination, he resolved to “do everything within [his] personal power to make sure that Donald Trump doesn’t have a second term.”
Data supports that Weinberg’s sentiment was likely widespread among Gen Z. Voter turnout by Americans aged 18-29 from 2016 to 2020 increased a remarkable 11 points from 39% to 50%— one of the highest rates of youth electoral participation since the voting age was lowered to 18.
It was a perfect storm of motivating factors which mobilized America’s youngest generation against the former president, with 66% totally disapproving of the job he was doing before the election. In 2016, young voters supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump 55% to 37%—a significantly smaller difference than in 2020. The shift is likely a result of Trump’s revelatory choices as president amidst a nationwide reckoning with race, tangible signs of imminent climate disaster, and a pandemic which drastically altered the lives of millions of teens. While the former president’s rhetoric and policies remained largely consistent from 2016 to 2020, the direct effects of his actions on young Americans became vastly more pronounced and personal.
We should not be surprised that America’s youth ran to the Democratic Party in 2020, when for them, Donald Trump and Republicanism were interchangeable. Gen Zers—many of whom were voting in a presidential election for the first time—lacked the party loyalty that may have motivated older Republicans to vote for Trump even as he shattered political norms and traditions. Instead, the Gen Z vote reflected their commitment to diversity, economic justice, and combating climate change, all ideological pillars of the left. But it would be still presumptuous to declare the generation as belonging to the Democratic Party for decades to come.
In contrast with older millennials and Generation X, Gen Zers share the recognized skepticism of younger millennials with the Democratic party’s establishment, seemingly to an even greater extent, and their unpredictability as voters must be taken into consideration. The aforementioned skepticism is not to say that younger millennials are “less liberal;” instead, they have shown themselves to be “somewhat less loyal to the Democratic Party.” And the same appears to be true for Gen Z.
While the White House recently made a clear attempt to appeal to Gen Z in the form of a brief visit from pop star Olivia Rodrigo, there are still no youth engagement staff housed in Biden’s Office of Public Engagement who are under 25 years old.
How long will Gen Z be patient with the Democrats?
Saniya Gaitonde is a first-year student at Barnard College. She is from Long Island and plans to study Political Science. She is passionate about American politics, global issues, and law.