A sprawling new survey studying the MAGA coalition has found that its younger members are often more conservative than their older peers, further evidence of how the Trump movement bucked conventional political thinking that younger people trend more liberal.
Compared with older Trump voters and non-Trump voters, young Trump voters were more likely to agree with statements like men should lead and women should follow; being religious is more rebellious than being atheist; and that Trump should fix the country even if it means ignoring the Supreme Court.
That’s according to “Beyond Maga,” a new survey from the non-profit More in Common, based on 18,000 interviews.
On other questions, however, younger voters appeared more moderate.
The largest proportion of Gen Z and Millennials could be found in two of the four ideological voting blocs identified in the research, the “Reluctant Right” and “Mainline Republicans.”
These groups often split with their harder-right counterparts in the “MAGA Hardliner” and “Anti-Woke Conservative” groups.
For instance, 98 percent of MAGA Hardliners told the survey the political left is an “existential threat” to America, while just 38 percent of the Reluctant Right agreed.
Only MAGA Hardliners, meanwhile, considered supporting Trump as a manifestation of their faith.
Though Donald Trump was once known for his cosmopolitan, playboy New York image, the Trump administration has pushed for a variety of what it considers more traditional values, ranging from striking DEI programs and protections for transgender people from government programs, to top officials engaging in macho fitness contests and government agencies using nostalgic frontier imagery to tout the deportation crackdown.
It remains to be seen whether these cultural appeals will guarantee a political future for the MAGA movement.
Polling from late last year suggests the president and his allies are quickly losing the young voters that helped give him an unexpected boost in the 2024 election.
President Trump’s approval rating stood at 32 percent among 18-to-29-year-olds, and young men preferred Democratic control of Congress by a 12 percent margin, according to the fall edition of Harvard’s Youth Poll.
Younger Gen Z men, those born between 2002 and 2007, may be even more anti-Trump, according to October research from YouGov and the Young Men’s Research Project, a potential sign that their time living through the social upheavals of the Covid pandemic and not being political aware during the first Trump administration may be shaping their experience.
The research found that majorities of Gen Z men overall opposed pieces of the Trump agenda such as ongoing ICE crackdowns, eliminating vaccine requirements, and unilaterally firing federal workers, but that younger Gen Z members were even more opposed.
“Odds are they were not aware of just how unstable everything felt during that first administration,” Charlie Sabgir, the author of the report, told Vox. “So they would feel buyer’s remorse.”
The fall Yale Youth Poll found that young voters overwhelmingly disapprove of the president‘s job performance, a flip from their position on the spring 2025 measure.
