Gen Z’s politics aren’t what people think

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After 12 years of dominating American politics — either as president, as a candidate, or from the sidelines — Donald Trump will finally exit the stage in 2028, and it’s anybody’s guess what will come next. But one thing we do know is that Gen Z, many of whom were children during Trump’s first campaign, will play a large role in shaping that future.

What’s less clear is what direction they might choose or what their politics are in the first place.

We do know a few things, thanks to a Vox collaboration with the polling firm Murmuration. For one, they’re highly independent: Almost 30 percent answered “none of the above” when they were asked to choose their political label in Murmuration’s survey. They’re an economically insecure cohort, at least for now; Murmuration found that only 28 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 30 said they could cover an unexpected expense of $500. And they had the largest gender gap of any age group when it came to supporting the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024 — women preferred Kamala Har

To find out more, Vox’s Astead Herndon spoke with Gen Z researcher Rachel Janfaza for a recent episode of America, Actually. They discussed the group’s political identities, preferences, and top issues, and what that all could mean for politics going forward. They discussed an important distinction between two versions of Gen Z, and whether its infamous gender gap is shifting. They also touched on how, contrary to seemingly everyone else, Gen Z is hope-maxxing.

Below is an excerpt of Astead’s conversation with Janfaza, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.

You’ve done a lot of work around the different Gen Zs. I’ve heard you talk about Gen Z 1 versus Gen Z 2. How would we describe those differences?

I call this the theory of the two Gen Zs. I really started to cultivate it doing focus groups with young people in 2022, hearing the way that high school students at the time and college students at the time just had a different outlook, and I realized that those who had graduated high school before the start of the pandemic, those Gen Z-ers, just had a different worldview than the younger half of Gen Z, who were still in high school at the time that the pandemic hit.

And that is because of the taste of independence that people on the older cusp of Gen Z had prior to the lockdown situation. Anyone who is between roughly 29 and 22, I would say, is Gen Z 1.0, and anyone younger than that would be Gen Z 2.0.

And there’s no official end date to Gen Z right now. Like, it’s sort of 1997 to 2012, so it’s not very clear yet.

Can you just name for me what the difference was between the generations? How did that shape a different form of politics?