Are the kids all right-wing? Donald Trump won the 2024 election thanks in part to increased support from young voters. Some experts see this as a sign of a generational sea change. As the prominent Democratic data scientist David Shor pointed out in a recent podcast conversation with the New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, 75-year-old white men were more likely to support the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, than 20-year-old white men were. “Young people have gone from being the most progressive generation since the Baby Boomers, and maybe even in some ways more so, to becoming potentially the most conservative generation that we’ve experienced maybe in 50 or 60 years,” Shor said.
孩子们右翼吗？唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）赢得了2024年的选举，部分原因是年轻选民的支持增加了。一些专家认为这是一代海洋变化的标志。正如著名的民主数据科学家戴维·谢尔（David Shor）在与《纽约时报》专栏作家埃兹拉·克莱因（Ezra Klein）最近的播客对话中指出的那样，75岁的白人更有可能支持民主党总统候选人卡马拉·哈里斯（Kamala Harris），而不是20岁的白人。Shor说：“年轻人已经从自婴儿潮一代以来成为最进步的一代，甚至在某些方面也可能是成为我们在50或60年中经历的最保守的一代。”
If Shor is right—if Gen Z (now ages 12 to 30) is durably to the right of previous generations—a significant part of the Democratic coalition is gone. Luckily for the party, however, he probably isn’t. The best available evidence suggests that the youth-vote shift in 2024 was more a one-off event than an ideological realignment.
如果Shor是正确的 - 如果Z世代（现年12至30岁）在前几代人的权利持久，那么民主联盟的重要部分就消失了。幸运的是，他可能不是。最好的证据表明，2024年的青年投票转变比意识形态调整更是一次一次性事件。
Faith Hill: The not-so-woke Generation Z
信仰山：不太醒来的一代Z
The Cooperative Election Study, one of the largest politically focused surveys of Americans, goes back to 2006 and just released its 2024 data. Those data aren’t perfect—they have yet to be validated against the voter file, meaning they are based on self-reported voter turnout. But they are still a much better source for studying generational shifts than data from just one year, like Shor’s. The CES is also more comprehensive than the average election poll, asking about voters’ ideological self-identification, party affiliation, and views on specific issues.
合作选举研究是对美国人的政治重点调查之一，可以追溯到2006年，刚刚发布了2024年的数据。这些数据并不完美 - 它们尚未针对选民文件进行验证，这意味着它们是基于自我报告的选民投票率的。但是它们仍然是研究世代变化的更好来源，而不是Shor的数据。CES也比平均选举民意调查更全面，询问选民的意识形态自我认同，党派隶属关系以及对特定问题的看法。
Consistent with other reports, the CES data show that young adults (ages 18 to 29) voted for Trump in 2024 at a much higher rate than they did in 2020. The trend was especially pronounced among young men, whose support for Trump increased by 10 percentage points since 2020, compared with 6 points for young women. Although some recent polling suggests that 18-to-21-year-olds were more likely to support Trump than 22-to-29-year-olds, the CES data show the younger and older subgroups voting for Trump at near-identical rates in 2024. Young adults were also more likely to vote for Republican House candidates than in 2020, though the change was not as large as in the presidential race.
与其他报告一致，CES的数据显示，年轻人（18至29岁）在2024年以比2020年的速度高得多的速度投票赞成特朗普。在年轻男性中，这种趋势尤为明显，他们的支持自2020年以来对特朗普的支持提高了10个百分点，而年轻女性则为6分。尽管最近的一些民意调查表明，与22至29岁的年轻人相比，18至21岁的年轻人更有可能支持特朗普，但CES数据表明，年轻和年长的亚组在2024年以几乎相同的速度投票给特朗普投票。尽管在总统竞赛中，但年轻人也比2020年更有可能为共和党众议院候选人投票。
But voting for a Republican candidate isn’t the same as identifying as conservative. Here is where the CES data cast doubt on the notion that Gen Z is an especially right-leaning generation. According to my analysis of the CES data, young adults have actually become less likely to identify as conservative in surveys during presidential-election years since 2008. The trend is not due to increases in the nonwhite population; fewer white young adults identified as conservative in 2024 (29 percent) than did in 2016 (33 percent).
但是，投票支持共和党候选人与确定为保守派并不相同。在这里，CES数据对Z代是特别右倾的一代的观念提出了怀疑。根据我对CES数据的分析，在2008年以来，在总统选举期间，在总统选举期间，年轻人在调查中的可能性较小。这种趋势并不是由于非白人人口的增加所致。与2016年（33％）相比，在2024年被确定为保守派的白人年轻人少。
What about young adults’ positions on specific political issues? For the most part, they are more liberal than previous generations. (No single definition of generational cutoffs exists. In my research and writing, I define the Millennial generation as being born from 1980 to 1994, and Gen Z from 1995 to 2012.) In the 2024 CES survey, 69 percent of young adults supported granting legal status to undocumented immigrants who have not been convicted of felony crimes and who have held jobs and paid taxes for at least three years, up from 58 percent in 2012, the last year all 18-to-29-year-olds were Millennials. Also in the 2024 survey, 63 percent agreed that “generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class,” up from 42 percent in 2012. Support for legal abortion among young adults rose from 46 percent in 2012 to 69 percent in 2024, though the question was worded somewhat differently in those two years. Only one belief shifted in the conservative direction: 62 percent of young adults in 2024 supported increasing border patrols at the U.S.-Mexico border, up from 45 percent in 2012.
年轻人在特定政治问题上的立场呢？在大多数情况下，它们比前几代人更自由。（在我的研究和写作中，没有任何一个世代临界值的定义，我将千禧一代定义为1980年至1994年出生于1994年，从1995年到2012年。）在2024年的CES调查中，有69％的年轻人支持授予未记录在2012年未付费的税收的人，至少在2012年被定罪的未记录的年轻人，至少在2012年被定罪，至少是三年的税收税，18至29岁的年轻人是千禧一代。同样在2024年的调查中，有63％的人同意“奴隶制和歧视的几代人创造了使黑人很难离开下层阶级的条件”，从2012年的42％上升。保守的方向只有一种信念发生了变化：2024年的62％的年轻人支持在美国 - 墨西哥边境的边界巡逻增加，而2012年的45％。
From the May 2023 issue: The myth of the broke Millennial
从2023年5月的发行中：破裂的千禧一代神话
The trend looks different if we look at data on partisanship rather than ideology. The Democratic Party has steadily been losing market share among young adults since 2008, mostly because young people have grown likelier to identify as independents; Gen Z is only slightly more Republican than Millennials were at the same age. These young independents tend to vote for Democrats, but, given their lack of party affiliation, their votes are more likely to swing from one election to the next. Indeed, most of the change over the past two elections appears to have been driven by young independent voters breaking for Trump in 2024 when they didn’t in 2020.
如果我们查看有关党派化而不是意识形态的数据，趋势看起来会有所不同。自2008年以来，民主党一直在稳步失去年轻人的市场份额，这主要是因为年轻人有可能确定为独立人士。Z世代仅比千禧一代的共和党人稍高。这些年轻的独立人士倾向于投票支持民主党人，但是，鉴于他们缺乏党派的隶属关系，他们的票数更有可能从一次选举转向下一次选举。的确，过去两个选举中的大部分变革似乎都是由年轻的独立选民在2024年不在2020年不在特朗普上闯入的。
Given that young voters have not become more likely to identify as conservative or hold broadly conservative political opinions, Gen Z might not be the disaster for Democrats that Shor and others are predicting. The 2024 election might have been an anomalous event in which young people’s deep dissatisfaction with the economy, especially the inflation that hit their just-starting-out budgets, drove them to want change.
鉴于年轻的选民不太可能确定保守派或具有广泛的保守政治观点，因此Z世代可能不是Shor和其他人预测的民主党人的灾难。2024年的大选可能是一个异常事件，在这种情况下，年轻人对经济的深感不满，尤其是打击他们刚刚开始预算的通货膨胀，驱使他们想要改变。
Another distinct possibility is that, going forward, Gen Z will vote for whichever party is not currently in office. Gen Z is a uniquely pessimistic generation. In data I analyzed for my book Generations, Gen Z high-school seniors were more likely than previous generations at the same age to agree with the statements “It is hard for me to hold out much hope for the world” and “I often wonder if there is any real purpose to my life in light of the world situation.” Young Americans today are also unconvinced that their country is anything special: Only 27 percent of high-school seniors think the U.S. system is “still the best in the world,” down from 67 percent in the early 1980s, according to a long-running national survey.
另一个明显的可能性是，向前看，Z世代将为目前不在任职的任何一方投票。Z世代是一个独特的悲观一代。在我分析了我的书几代的数据中，Z世代的高中生比同龄的前几代更有可能同意“我很难对世界抱有很大的希望”，并且“我经常想知道，鉴于我的世界状况，我的生活是否有真正的目的。”如今，年轻的美国人也不相信他们的国家是什么特别的：只有27％的高中生认为，美国的系统“仍然是世界上最好的系统”，根据1980年代初期的67％，这是一项长期的全国调查。
If young people’s attitudes persist as they get older, Gen Z might never be pleased with how things are going in the country. They’ll want to “vote the bastards out” in the next election no matter which party is in power. Compared with the idea of a new and persistent conservatism in young voters, a generalized pessimism bodes better for the Democrats in 2026 or 2028. But if Democrats regain power, Gen Z might turn on them once again, repeating the cycle in an endless loop of political dissatisfaction.
如果年轻人的态度随着年龄的增长而持续存在，那么Z世代可能永远不会对该国的情况感到满意。无论哪个政党掌权，他们都希望在下一次选举中“投票给混蛋”。与年轻选民中新的和持续的保守主义的想法相比，普遍的悲观主义体现在2026年或2028年对民主党人的范围更好。但是，如果民主党人恢复权力，Z代可能会再次打开他们，以无尽的政治不满情绪重复循环。
