The Decisive Demographic

 Plenty of folks are making predictions about what will finally decide next Tuesday’s US presidential election. It will be the abortion question or the economy or crime or immigration. Rural vs. urban. College-educated vs. high school-educated. It’ll all come down to which party does a better job getting decided voters to the polls. Or what the weather is in 14 counties in 7 swing states.

What I’ll be looking for is which candidate wins the Gen Z vote. That’s the youngest group of voters with the greatest number of new voters. That means it is also the group we know least about. Here’s what we do know:

·      There are 40.8 million of them who could vote. Many are newly registered and 8 million will be eligible for the first time;

·      About 45% of those eligible voters will be people of color;

·      By definition, young voters are more “swayable.” They haven’t locked in voting patterns yet. They haven’t even established if they are voting yet.

The gap in voting preference between young men and women is bigger than it has ever been. 

In 2020, the Gen Z vote was a landslide. Exit polls from then showed Biden winning the youngest voters 60-36, a margin that explains most of his 4.46% margin in the overall polls and his victories in swing states.

This time, the only thing certain is that the margin in the youth vote will be a lot smaller. The typical poll doesn’t talk to enough people in sub-demographics to provide reliable numbers, but most polls suggest a pretty dramatic change, with almost all of it coming among young men.

There’s a gender gap between men and women in all age groups, but nowhere is it bigger than among 18-29 year-olds. If you average one set of polls (New York Times/Siena), Trump leads Harris 58-37 among 18-29 year-old men (and they “lean Republican” 53-40).

Harris leads Trump among young women by even more, 67-28 (and they “lean Democrat” 66-27).  Note: these polls are all over the place: the most recent Harvard Youth Poll shows Harris leading among young men, though by a considerable smaller margin than among young women.

What’s happened since 2020? One theory is that young people are sorting through political preferences via social media. Young men are more likely than young women to be on gaming, gambling and crypto platforms, all of which skew male and conservative. While young women were listening to Kamala Harris on the “Call Her Daddy” and “Unlocking Us” podcasts, targeted at women, young men were listening to Donald Trump on The Joe Rogan Experience, a show with 81% male listeners and 56% 34 or younger.

As different as Gen Z voting preferences seem to be, they actually don’t disagree that much on policy issues. Young men and women are closely aligned in wanting a permanent cease fire between Israel and Hamas, and wanting a more stable economy, and think Republicans are more likely to achieve that. But they also want to ensure permanent recognition of gay marriage and transgender rights, action on climate change and cuts to the defense budget and think Democrats are more likely to achieve those things.

Young men and women generally agree on the biggest issues, but policy doesn’t appear to be what is causing their voting divide.

There are some differences that may tell us something. For the first time this year young men are more likely to be religiously affiliated than women (66% vs. 60%) and are 12 percentage points more likely to want children than young women. Both men and women support abortion rights, but women say it is a more important issue to them.

But the differences on policy aren’t nearly as significant as the differences in polling are. That means final vote decisions for Gen Z may come down to things that don’t show up in polls, like style and culture. When you read 1-1 interviews with them, young men seem to be embracing Trump’s swagger and to feel more “valued” by him; women like Harris’ cool confidence and feel like she understands them.

Of course, all of that could be wrong. A new Harris poll found that  48% of Gen Z members surveyed admit to lying about their political preferences – they say they’d rather tell the person they are talking with what they think the person wants to hear than get into a political argument. “There’s a new privacy emerging here, where it’s far more convenient to either lie or not talk about it,” John Gerzema, CEO of Harris, told Axios.

So are the polls right or not? Will the new voters show up and vote or sit it out? And if they do, will it be more young men or women? It’s the biggest unknown in an election of unknowns. The Gen Z demographic’s final decisions could be… decisive.

Notes:

Gen Z eligibility numbers: https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/41-million-members-gen-z-will-be-eligible-vote-2024

The youth gender gap: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/opinion/biden-younger-voters-gender.html

More on gender gap: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/18/upshot/polls-trump-harris-young-men.html

Anes 2024 election study comparing preferences among younger men and women: https://electionstudies.org/data-center/2024-time-series-study/

Fall Harvard Youth Poll: https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/48th-edition-fall-2024

Gen Z more likely to lie about voting preferences: https://www.axios.com/2024/10/30/election-gen-z-voting-lies