Super young voters, those 22 and under known as Generation Z, are offering Republicans a chance to claim some of the youth vote lost when millennials fell hard for former President Barack Obama.
Three new reports and surveys provided by the moderate Republican Ripon Society in its Ripon Forum find that Generation Z, while liberal on social issues, are conservative about money, scarred by the Great Recession under which they grew up.
Keystone College political professor Jeffrey Brauer found that 78 percent identify with liberals on social issues, but a larger 83 percent identify as moderate to conservative on money issues.
And, he said, in 2016, their first presidential election, they helped dilute the youth vote for Hillary Clinton by 7 points from what President Obama received in 2012.
Swing state changes from 2012 to 2016 were more dramatic — and impactful. “In Florida, the Democratic margin of victory for the youth vote from 2012 to 2016 dropped 16 points. In both Ohio and Pennsylvania, the drop was 19 points. In Wisconsin, it was 20 points. These dramatic declines helped give Republican Donald Trump a win in each of these states, pushing him over the top in the Electoral College,” he found.
Brauer concluded in Ripon Forum:
It is highly unlikely that such significant declines in the Democratic margin of victory for the youth vote were simply due to the more liberal Millennial Generation changing their minds from one election to the next. It is much more likely that the precipitous drops were due to the more conservative Generation Z being able, for the first time, to express their political inclinations, especially in economically hard-hit swing states. Some Generation Z voters were likely attracted to the Republican candidate because of Trump’s strong stances on economic recovery and national security – two of the main concerns of that generation. They were also likely to be dissuaded by the apparent lack of transparency and accessibility of the Clinton campaign…those are traits that Gen Z demands in leadership, which Trump seemingly possessed during the election with his “tell it like it is” style.
Therefore, Generation Z possibly had a major, yet completely overlooked, impact in the historic 2016 presidential election.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
