Why Zoomers Are Turning MAGA

New polls show that the Gen Z vote, which Biden won by about 20 points in 2020, is now in play.

A recent New York Times/Siena College survey—taken after Biden’s disastrous debate flop—puts Trump ahead of Biden by eight points among registered voters aged 18–29. And Pew research, conducted from February 1 to June 10, 2024, shows the GOP is leading among those under 30.

Carroll is one of a growing number of Gen Z Americans, born between 1997 and 2012, who are planning to vote for Trump this November. The idea of voting Republican before 30 is like going on birth control at 60. You could, but why would you? Which is why the latest polling on the political leanings of America’s youth is so shocking.

“They generally think of Trump as the antihero,” says Della Volpe, once known as the Biden campaign’s “Gen Z whisperer.” “He’s a voice against the establishment.”

That kind of “cult of personality,” he adds, “could be quite attractive” to young men.

“Trump is a lot more competitive than he was four years ago,” said John Della Volpe, a Harvard pollster who helped advise Biden’s 2020 campaign.

Much of that, he says, boils down to young men, who data show are politically drifting away from their increasingly liberal female peers.