Young people have long leaned left, but some members of Gen Z, including those who grew up in progressive homes, are questioning the status quo and realizing that they’re not really Democrats.
More than half of Gen Z Not specified In terms of political party, more than one-fifth (21%) identify as Republicans.
The Post spoke to four young voters who have left the left about their political journeys.
Becky Oliveira: “Exhausted by the constant anger” of the left
If you had met Becky Oliveira as a teenager, she would have told you she was a left-wing, radical feminist.
“I was a very emotional, hormonal, angry girl, and this ideology was very appealing to me because it was a place where I could channel that anger to fight against power structures,” the 23-year-old from Queens told The Washington Post.
Although Oliveira’s parents weren’t particularly political, she said she grew up surrounded by left-wing messages at school, through her peers and especially online.
“I’m a typical Tumblr leftist who grew up learning about gender theory through social media,” she said.
When Donald Trump won in 2016, the then-15-year-old was devastated.
“I was crying and screaming all day because I was so scared. I thought a horde of KKK members were going to come and shoot me and my friends because we were Hispanic,” she recalled.
But now, in 2024, she plans to support Trump: “The idea that ‘orange men are bad’ is a cliche and overused now. I think more and more young people are realizing that.”
Oliveira’s political shift was driven by the coronavirus lockdown, when “something inexplicable clicked” while he was studying at St Francis College.
Oliveira said the summer of 2020, when vaccine mandates and the Black Lives Matter protests turned violent, suddenly made him question everything.
“I began to become exhausted by the constant anger,” she said. “I think I started to mature as a person and realize that a lot of my reactions were based more on emotion than fact.”
Since the pandemic began, Oliveira has done a political about-face, joining the Young Republicans of New York and getting involved in local politics, and now works as a spokesperson for New York City Council Member Ina Vernikov, a Republican.
“I had just woken up to left-wing groupthink and decided I couldn’t go along with this chic idea of following trends anymore.”
Logan Duville: “Generation Z men tend to be conservative”
Growing up, Logan D’Uville aligned himself with the left-wing politics of his friends and family.
“I definitely identify with liberal ideas,” says the 23-year-old. “I learned about those values from friends and online, and it seemed popular, so I decided to follow them.”
D’Uville, who grew up in Pennsylvania where his father supported Bernie Sanders, began questioning the left-wing thinking he inherited after the 2016 election.
“After Trump won, I saw that a lot of people were very upset or very excited about it and I wanted to understand why, so I started looking into it further,” said D’Uville, who is studying marketing at Point Park University.
“I started researching it myself and realized I was right,” he recalls.
After researching pro-life positions, D’Ubil realized she wasn’t actually pro-choice, and that her awakening to gender ideology had left her disgusted with the left: “Basically, it’s just being imposed on us, and a lot of people are fed up with it.”
Since then, he has become an outspoken Republican and frequently airs his views on social media, which has caused a rift within his family.
“My father always lectures me when he disagrees with my position,” D’Ubil said. “Some relatives have even blocked me on social media. I value family very much, so it makes me sad when people who disagree with me try to remove me from their lives just because of a political difference.”
Nevertheless, D’Ubil remains adamant.
He supported Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary but has now endorsed Trump and expects many of his colleagues to do the same.
“I have a lot of friends who have had the same experience,” he says. “Generation Z men tend to be conservative, and I think this trend will continue, especially with so many right-wing political commentators reaching out to them on social media.”
Maxwell: “DEI in the Workplace Was a Wake-Up Call.”
In Maxwell’s view, Democrats have always been the “good guys” — until they weren’t.
The 27-year-old Manhattan resident grew up in Colorado and inherited his father’s progressive political views.
“I was completely in tune with my father’s political leanings and truly believed that Democrats were good people fighting for very common sense causes,” Maxwell, who asked not to use her last name to protect her privacy, told The Washington Post.
Maxwell believed the Democrats were the party of choice for her because she supported same-sex marriage, environmental protection and limiting US involvement in the Iraq War.
But while working at a consulting firm during the pandemic, he had his eyes opened to a DEI initiative that rolled out in the summer of 2020.
“The CEO called an all-hands meeting to discuss diversity initiatives, and I always thought that was a good thing,” he recalls.
However, Maxwell claimed the CEO had announced that he would no longer mentor white people or men in order to promote “inclusivity” within the company.
“It suddenly became clear to me that left-wing activists were in control, including the university where I worked and the big corporations,” he recalls.
Since then, Maxwell has been a vocal critic of affirmative action employment policies, which she calls “racist,” vaccination mandates, which she calls “draconian,” and office closures during the pandemic.
He voted for Biden in 2020 but now considers it a “mistake.” He is undecided between Trump and Kennedy for president in 2024, and says the most important issues for him as a voter are controlling immigration, passing business-friendly regulations and restoring law and order to American cities.
For Maxwell, who now works at a software startup, his political views make life difficult: “The persistence of left-wing politics and a monoculture of coastal elites makes it increasingly difficult to survive in tech.”
Grace Guenzel: “I never thought about the Republican position.”
Grace Guenzel became a Democrat because she was raised by Democrats.
“My family was pretty liberal and I was surrounded by very liberal Democrats,” the 20-year-old from Gilbert, Arizona, told The Washington Post. “That’s the way I was raised, so at first I just went along with them.”
Growing up in Minnesota, she was taught to be staunchly pro-abortion and anti-gun, but “slowly and gradually came to terms over the last few years” and became a Republican.
“I guess I didn’t explore the nuances that much,” Guenzel said. “I never really understood the pro-life or pro-gun positions before. I didn’t understand either perspective. I just accepted the way I was raised.”
Being a Democrat was convenient and was the status quo in her community, but while attending Arizona State University to study history, Grace purposefully began engaging with the other side.
“I finally started consciously seeking out different opinions,” she says. “When I started studying history, economics and international politics in school, I was really exposed to so many different perspectives and ways of thinking about things.”
She says that when she started thinking about issues like abortion, it was an eye-opener: “I don’t eat meat, but I used to be very pro-abortion. Then I realised why a fetus is less worthy of life than a cow.”
Guenzel currently identifies as a Republican.
Her family said: [her] They avoid the topic, citing “changing politics,” but some of their peers have shunned her because of her opinions: “I’ve lost some friends, but that’s OK, because they’re not people who value debate and conversation.”
Heading into the 2024 election, she hasn’t decided whether to vote for Kennedy or Trump, but she says she’s looking for a candidate who will solve the border crisis, protect gun rights and bar transgender women from girls’ sports. And one thing’s for sure: “I definitely won’t be voting for Biden.”
