Image by DJ Paine.

Can Donald Trump retain the allegiance of the key voter groups that swung his way in 2024? Perhaps none of those voter shifts were as dramatic and consequential as the defection of youth – long a mainstay of the Democratic base. Gen Z voters, fueled by despair over student debt and mounting joblessness, fled en masse to the GOP last November, helping to drive Trump over the top. The defection was especially strong among Gen Z men, who felt alienated by the female-centric messaging of the Harris campaign. The final numbers came as a shocker to Democrats: Harris won youth by paltry 10 points, compared to Biden’s 20, and Trump crushed her among young men by a whopping 14 points. With Gen Z and millennials now occupying such a dominant place in the electorate, it’s an ominous storm cloud on the horizon.

But that was eight months ago. While still publicly jubilant, many of Trump’s allies, including the very strategists that helped design and carry out his youth mobilization campaigns, are beginning to get worried. None of these strategists is more worried than Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA, which started as a conservative campus youth group back in 2012 but soon morphed into a major Trump presidential campaign arm. Kirk was one of the leading proponents of the “low-propensity” voter strategy aimed at convincing deeply disaffected and apathetic conservatives to register and show up to vote for Trump – and despite widespread skepticism among traditional Republicans, the strategy paid off, as millions of voters who hadn’t cast ballots consistently since 2016, did so in 2024.

While youth voting has actually improved since 2016, Kirk saw an opening to convert this youth voter surge to Trump, exploiting a latent antipathy towards feminism and abortion to drive men especially to swing conservative in record numbers. And so they did.

But Kirk is now busy sounding the alarm that youth may not stay in the GOP camp. He’s seen the latest polls showing rising youth sympathy for “socialism,” and he’s especially disturbed by the prospect of a victory by Zohran Mamdani in the New York Mayor’s race. Youth are fickle, Kirk, says, and easily swayed by emotional issue appeals on social inequality and climate change. On the issues, they’re simply not Republicans, not yet at least. Without Trump to inspire them, they may well vote Democrat again, he warns.

In a little-noticed op-ed in USA Today published last month, Kirk laid out his case in some detail. “[2024] was a big win. But it was also impermanent. It could be a one-off,” he argues. “It could easily be explained by the aftermath of COVID or the incredible political charisma of Donald Trump himself. The youth vote of 2024 wasn’t so much a win as it was an opportunity: A clear demonstration that conservatives actually can compete to win the votes of American young people, rather than writing them off.”

But Trump’s going to pass from the scene, and conservatives like Kirk know it. His biggest fear? Conditions for youth won’t substantially improve over the next two to three years, leading to more frustration and another swing of the political pendulum. And that could well open the door to a mass embrace by youth of a candidate like Zohran Mamdani in New York and AOC nationally, Kirk argues.

“Most of Gen Z is ideologically fluid. They’re happy to give Republicans a shot, then turn around and elect a Marxist two years later,” he warns.

“The challenge for Republicans now is seizing this Gen Z opportunity,” Kirk says. “Because Gen Z won’t become lifelong conservatives thanks to a good campaign or slick online memes. They’ll only become lifelong supporters if we’re able to deliver for them on the big issues that matter.”

Evidence of youth disaffection has already shown up in the polling. Trump’s approval rating with young voters was roughly 55% in February, but fell to 28% in May, according to CBS. That fall was more than twice as high as the next age group. The main reason? Anxiety over the state of the economy, Including the stock market and the job market. Trump’s youth approval rating may have rebounded somewhat since then, but the deterioration from his high water mark remains. One authoritative source, the Pew Research Center, estimates that Trump has lost 30% of his youth support since his victory last November.

In theory, all of this is good news for progressives – in theory. But there isn’t much evidence that Democrats, at least, know how to rebound with resonant youth-based strategy. A top Senate Democrat – Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) – has called for more “alpha energy” but no one really knows what that might consist of. More tacky gun-toting ads with the likes of Tim Walz? A Joe Rogan-style podcast? In July Democrats sponsored a Gen-Z “summit” – at a fancy high-end hotel no less – to discuss their “young male crisis” and the event quickly foundered. Kirk covered the event, as a curious bystander, and lampooned it as “cringe-worthy,” convinced that Republicans still have the upper hand.

What’s the upshot? The youth vote isn’t diehard conservative — or diehard progressive; it’s actually extremely volatile, and potentially up for grabs. After last November’s humiliation at the polls, that’s some cautionary good news. But only if Democrats figure out what to make of it. The bad news: They still haven’t, not as a national party.

However, the Mamdani campaign in New York – just as Kirk fears – may contain some important clues for Democrats, if they heed them. One is that youth are just as focused – in fact, even more so, perhaps – on bread and butter or kitchen table issues than older voter groups. Mamdani isn’t playing up issues like climate change, reproductive rights, or even the plight of immigrants – issues whose visibility may have cost Harris and the Democrats mightily last year. He’s focused on “affordability,” which includes not just high rents and grocery prices but also joblessness. Youth unemployment in NYC is nearly 14%, more than double the general population’s. And Black unemployment is nearly 24%. These are unacceptable conditions and make affordability at any price a difficult proposition

The important point is that these problems aren’t necessarily rooted in partisan policies. Mamdani, a Democrat, is running against a Democrat-led establishment that has failed the voters by becoming hostage to Big Money interests – the banks and corporations – to which both parties – with some variation in emphasis – are largely beholden. He’s attracting youth by running as a de facto independent, while the badly tarnished establishment Democrats are now trying to recoup their position by running as independents. It’s an astounding turnaround, but it’s allowed him to become the “mainstream” candidate, even as an avowed “socialist.”

It may also be suggestive of what matters most. Youth are looking for unabashedly bold new leadership, a generational champion perhaps, as in Mamdani, but not necessarily, as suggested by Trump. As the two parties look ahead to 2026 and especially 2028, they’ll need to ask themselves whether they are actually listening to young voters, and meeting them where they are. Where they are may not be obvious, and preaching to them about where they should be at, based on pre-existing ideological positions and policy planks favored by entrenched constituency groups, however PC, is unlikely to be a recipe for success. It’s also possible to have a full panoply of issue concerns, but it’s important to win, and you win with the issues that will bring the most people to the table, and with the most energy to vote.

That may require patience and humility, a willingness to trim the ideological and issue banner, and a strict discipline in messaging. Not always a strong suit for youth or any other group with a grievance, but the alternative – driving away potential supporters, and defeat – won’t leave any aggrieved constituency happy in the end.

The post Conservatives Fear Anxiety-Ridden Youth Could Defect from Trump appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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