How MAGA lost Gen Z

The online vibes are shifting.

When Trump was sworn into office in January 2025, pundits of all stripes declared a “new age” in politics and culture — one where the nation’s youngest voters had decisively turned their backs on the left and switched allegiances to a vast, diverse conservative coalition.

In a now-infamous cover, New York Magazine dubbed this new era the “Cruel Kids’ Table.”

According to this popular narrative, the Democratic Party was doomed for a generation.

But now, just one year later, an entirely different story is unfolding.

As MAGA bleeds support from voters of every demographic, there is one group of voters who stand out as rebelling the most against Trump: Gen Z.

The latest Gallup poll shows 59% of voters between 18 and 29 disapprove of the second Trump administration — and that number is climbing. A Harvard Youth Poll found only 13% of young people believed the U.S. is headed in the right direction, and only 30% believe we will be better off financially than our parents.

As with every broad social trend, there are many reasons for this: Cultural flashpoints, ICE’s abuses of power, the Epstein files, affordability. But if you take it all as a whole, Trump has simply lost his grasp on the online-first information environment where Gen Z receives their information.

If you want a clear example of the recent vibe shift in American culture, look no further than the Super Bowl this past Sunday. MAGA spent weeks framing Latin singer Bad Bunny’s halftime performance as some sort of evil liberal bogeyman who was out to, uh, ban English or something? To them, Bad Bunny’s ascendance to headlining this major cultural event was a direct affront to the cultural gains they had made since last year.

They were so outraged that they went as far as setting up an entirely opposing Halftime Show, hosted by Turning Point USA and headlined by the washed up singer Kid Rock. Despite their confidence that they could match the viewership numbers of the Benito Bowl, they ended up peaking at 6 million viewers compared to Bad Bunny’s 135 million.

Yet another case in recent weeks that has turned young people off from the Trump coalition is the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti.

Prior to their deaths, the conversation around ICE had been boiling for the better part of the last year — largely in part to countless viral videos surfacing online of masked agents whisking mothers and children off the street. But it all reached a boiling point the day that Renée Good’s killing was recorded and uploaded from what felt like every possible angle.

Even some of the most right-wing pundits could not justify the level of brutality from ICE agents toward Good when faced with the final interaction between her and the agent himself: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you,” she stated, only to be met with the agent calling her a “fuckin’ bitch” after shooting her three times. Roughly a week later, when Alex Pretti was tackled to the ground and shot, the abuse of power was undeniable for Americans across the political spectrum.

Trump and his minions responded to these events in almost perfect accordance with the infamous George Orwell quote: ”The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

But here’s the thing: The nationwide ICE backlash was driven by social media and viral videos recorded by everyday citizens. And for a generation of digital natives like Gen Z, we saw straight through Trump’s bullshit.

Then there are the Epstein files. This scandal poured gasoline on Gen Z’s already massive bonfire of cynicism about the rich and powerful. But while Donald Trump was able to ride that cynicism to a narrow victory in 2024 through his anti-establishment rhetoric, this scandal has been highly effective at tying him to the very establishment he claimed to be so strongly against.

And perhaps most critically, in an information environment where news stories can last only hours before disappearing forever, the online discourse around the Epstein files has been raging for months on end. The “drip-drip-drip” nature of the file release and the absurd redactions have kept MAGA on everlasting defense and reminded people that Trump is the exact scummy, well-connected billionaire figure he postured himself as being against.

Finally, the number one word on everyone’s lips in 2024 was affordability. Trump sold Gen Z a dream of finally being able to afford a home, a stable job, and a 401k — but as we enter the second year of Trump 2.0, prices don’t seem to be budging.

By stark contrast, images and stories have gone viral of Trump spending an awful lot of time (and money) obliterating the East Wing to build himself a golden ballroom and profiteering off his own crypto-coin. To add insult to injury, Trump has recently started referring to affordability as a “hoax,” and occasionally sends out Scott Bessent or Howard Lutnick to assure voters that the economy will just fix itself eventually.

In short, MAGA is losing the culture war. They’ve made too many missteps that have been woven into the fabric of online culture, percolating through Gen Z’s For You Pages and into their daily conversations. To be clear, this is not to say that they’ve all suddenly shifted to the left… yet. Progressives will have to do a lot more to win our generation back — including investing in online-first strategies to capture this momentum.

But the tides are turning. And this is the time to change minds.