What's Up with Millennial Voters?
Lately they're leaning less Democratic—and for a good while they've been split by a worrisome (and ever-widening) gender divide.
[Note: This essay is too long to appear fully as an e-mail. If you got this by e-mail, please click on the title to read the entire post on Substack. -NH]
Two trends in the political leanings of youth are worth keeping an eye on. They both apply broadly to Millennials, which I tentatively define as all Americans born between 1982 and 2005. Late-born Millennial cohorts are often called Generation Z, a term (as readers of my books will know) I avoid because it presumes without evidence that successive generations are each getting shorter than the last. OK, so much for my definitional preamble.
The first trend is this: Over the last year or so, more than any other generation, Millennials are responsible for improving the odds that Trump’s GOP will win the White House in 2024. Millennials as a whole will still probably vote for Democratic candidates, but right now it looks like they will do so by a smaller margin than they did in 2022, 2020, or 2016. For most Millennials (as for most voters of all ages), it’s not so much that they are enthusiastic about Trump; it’s more that a growing share no longer prefer Biden over Trump.