The two Gen Zs

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Plus: The case for big government, health trackers galore, and South Korea's presidential election.

View this email in your browser    👋  Did this email get forwarded to you? Sign up here to get Today, Explained daily. Today, Explained the newsletter June 5, 2025 Cameron Peters here — welcome to Thursday!  Today, we're taking a look at one of the biggest questions from the 2024 election: What exactly happened with Gen Z?  We know they shifted to the right, which is already unusual, since young voters tend to lean Democratic. But new data lets us get a bit more specific — and reveals a distinct split within the Gen Z cohort. Christian Paz explains what's going on: Cameron Peters, staff editor ⮕ Start here Young Gen Z and Old Gen Z, explained Scott Olson/Getty Images Christian Paz is a senior politics reporter at Vox.   Christian Paz is a senior politics reporter at Vox.   We can confidently say that Gen Z got a lot more Republican over the last couple of years, thanks to a swarm of young, first-time voters — specifically men of all races.   Pre-election polling captured this phenomenon, voter registration trends tracked it, and post-election exit polls suggest ballots reflected it. Add to this a recent report from the Democratic firm Catalist and you start to get a pretty solid sense that young voters have shifted hard toward the Republican Party.   Still, that might elide some nuance within Gen Z.   The data we have from the last election suggests, broadly, at least two types of young voters: "Old Gen Z" (more Democratic, more progressive) and "Young Gen Z" (more Trump-curious, more skeptical of the status quo).   That internal split, roughly between those ages 18 and 24 in the latter camp and 25 to 29 in the former, hasn't dissipated post-election; it is still showing up in polling and surveys. No cohort is monolithic but a combination of factors — the pandemic, the rise of smartphones and newer social media, inflation, Trump — seems to be driving a wedge within Gen Z.   About a year ago, the Harvard Youth Poll, a public opinion project that has been recording young voters' sentiments for more than a decade, tracked a major difference in the way voters under the age of 30 were feeling about Joe Biden and Donald Trump.    While Biden held a lead of 14 percentage points among adults aged 25 to 29, his lead among 18- to 24-year-olds was 10 points smaller. Support for Trump was higher among the younger part of this cohort by 5 percentage points in the March 2024 poll.   That dynamic remained true even after the Democrats switched to Kamala Harris as their standard-bearer. In the same poll conducted in September, the younger half of Gen Z voters continued to lag in its Democratic support compared to the older half.   Now, more than four months into the Trump presidency, this dynamic — of Young Gen Z being more friendly to Republicans than Old Gen Z — continues to show up in the latest Harvard IOP poll.    For example, the March 2025 survey found that Young Gen Z holds more favorable views of Republicans in Congress than Old Gen Z, while the older cohort disapproves of the GOP by a 35-point margin, the margin for the younger cohort is 28 points. Similarly, the older cohort disapproves of Trump's job performance more sharply than the younger cohort — a 7-point gap on the margins.   The same survey found Trump's favorability is 5 points better with Young Gen Z than with Old Gen Z. And while both groups tend to be unaffiliated with either party, a slightly larger share of Young Gen Z, 26 percent to 23 percent for Old Gen Z, identifies with the GOP.   Harvard's poll isn't the only one picking up this split in preferences. Yale University's youth poll from April has tracked similar divisions in political identification and preferences while other nonpolitical polling from the Pew Research Center has tracked internal differences within Gen Z as well.   In terms of ideology, the polling is noisier but shows signs of a split as well.  Harvard's pre-election polls did track higher "conservative" identification rates among under-25s than over-25s. Across all three 2024 and 2025 Harvard polls, conservative identification is essentially unchanged for both groups. Other polling, however, suggests that the youngest zoomers may still hold more conservative views than the oldest zoomers.   According to the spring Yale Youth Poll, younger Gen Z men and women tend to have more Republican-coded opinions than their older Gen Z peers on a range of policy issues.    Younger Gen Z is also the segment of Americans where religiosity seems to be holding steady, if not outright increasing. They are outpacing older Gen Z and younger millennial men in identifying with a religion, per the Pew Research Center's latest Religious Landscape Study.   Increased religiosity isn't necessarily direct evidence of more conservative thought or Republican affiliation, but there is a correlation between Republican partisan identification and respondents saying that the role of religion is important to them or that they identify with a religion at all.   Should these trends hold, they will pose a challenge for both major political parties. The idea of a rising Democratic electorate looks increasingly tenuous, and the polling since suggests the pro-GOP shift among younger Gen Z-ers may not be a blip.    But Republicans will have work to do to sustain these gains and to have them work in their party's favor during election season. That Young Gen Z showed up for the GOP in 2024 doesn't guarantee that they will do so again.   And a lot is at stake. Gen Z will become the largest part of the electorate in 2030 and will have the power to sway elections — if Democrats and Republicans can keep them engaged. ⮕ Keep tabs   Bigger and better: Big government isn't a bad thing, even in the age of Trump, argues my colleague Abdallah Fayyad.   Data overload: Vox's Adam Clark Estes spent six months trying every health tracker out there. Here's what happened.   More debt: Republicans want to cut taxes, slash Medicaid, and more — all in one big bill. Doing so would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit, a nonpartisan agency says. [New York Times] New president: Lee Jae-myung just won South Korea's presidential election. Now for the hard part. [New Yorker]   Right now, you can get over 30% off an annual Vox Membership. That means unlimited access to all of Vox — our in-depth explainers, ad-free podcasts, member-only newsletters, and more. Become a member 🎧 Listen in Listen Black schools, red states A supporter of President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis was just appointed to lead the historically Black college Florida A&M University. Students and alumni are not happy. WFSU's Lynn Hatter and Tuskegee University's President Mark Brown explain how Black colleges are currently navigating red states. Listen now 🔗 Click here I've been enjoying this livestream of a bald eagle's nest in California recently. It has great views, beautiful birds, and soothing nature sounds — I hope you check it out too.  Today's edition was produced and edited by me, staff editor Cameron Peters. We're almost to Friday — I'll see you back here then!  Are you enjoying the Today, Explained newsletter? Forward it to a friend; they can sign up here. And as always, we want to know what you think. Let us know by filling out this form or just replying to this email.  This email was sent to punjabsvera@gmail.com. Manage your email preferences or unsubscribe. If you value Vox's unique explanatory journalism, support our work with a one-time or recurring contribution.   View our Privacy Notice and our Terms of Service.   Vox Media, 1701 Rhode Island. NW, Washington, DC 20036. Copyright © 2025. All rights reserved.