What’s behind the accelerating shift of younger Americans toward the Democratic Party?

Meanwhile, a striking change has been taking place across a vast swath of American society that’s determining more and more of American democracy’s future: its younger voters. And it’s a change that could have major implications not just for Trump’s style of politics but for the United States’ election results and national policies for decades to come.

Large majorities of the two youngest generations of Americans—Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) and Generation Z (1997 and 2010)—consistently support opinions to the left of the political center on their country’s most controversial issues, whether on abortion, gun control, race, same-sex marriage, or transgender rights. Like many young generations in recent U.S. history, Millennials and Gen Z tend to vote for the Democratic Party more consistently than other age groups do—but they also tend to identify with the Democrats much more strongly than previous generations did when they were young. What’s happening here?

David A. Hopkins is an associate professor of political science at Boston College. As Hopkins sees it, this great shift to the left among younger voters is part of a major social transformation in America. It’s visible in the ways influential U.S. institutions—from universities to entertainment media, to corporations—have been adopting and promoting progressive moral and political positions on questions of identity, race, and gender. And it’s started to alter the composition of the Democratic Party’s base—along with the party’s political rhetoric and policy priorities.

It’s not clear, however, what these changes will mean for American politics in the longer term, Hopkins says—not least because ultimately, American politics tends to reshape itself around the larger social and generational changes that are continually reshaping the country.

David A. Hopkins: We know they’re clearly Democratic-leaning. The Democrat’s advantage when it comes to party identification and voting is greater among Millennials and Gen Z than it is among any older generation—and arguably greater than it’s been among any older generation when it was younger.

In other words, what we’re seeing now isn’t just, yet again, people leaning to the left when they’re young and then moving to the right as they age. We’re seeing younger generations that lean more to the left than previous generations ever have at their age.

This extends to people’s positions on issues, as well. It’s not just that Millennials and Gen Z tend to prefer Democrats to Republicans; it’s also that Millennials and Gen Z tend to lean to the left ideologically on economic and cultural issues, compared to older Americans. The generation gap is more pronounced on cultural issues, but that’s less unusual than the growing gap on economic issues.

Across the board, younger voters are further to the left—both than their elders are today or than younger voters were in previous generations.

Bluhm: Why do you think younger voters are further left than previous generations were?

Hopkins: It’s a combination of things. One factor is demographics. This is the most racially diverse generation in American history—particularly in the composition of Hispanics and Asian Americans. But even among whites, we see the same generational differences in beliefs and Democratic affiliation. So race isn’t the whole story.

One constant in contemporary American history is that the political climate when you’re an adolescent or young adult can be very influential in shaping your political identity. Barack Obama was an especially popular president with younger people, and Donald Trump was an especially unpopular president with younger people. In the last 15 years, American politics has presented a strong contrast between the parties that’s tended to work among younger Americans to the Democrats’ advantage.

On culture-war issues—like sexual identity, race, gender equality—younger people are living in a social environment that puts most of them further to the left than their parents and grandparents ever were.

Hopkins: There is some evidence of a shift to the right among younger voters. That wouldn’t be too surprising, given how we usually see a pattern like that from generation to generation.

But it’s complicated by the fact that more people in younger generations are voting from one election to the next. Turnout rates rise with age, so more people of every generation start voting as they get older. In other words, the Millennials who voted in the 2020 election are not the same ones who voted in the 2008 election. Some weren’t old enough to vote in 2008, and some who voted in 2020 had decided not to vote in 2008.

“In the last 20 years, there’ve been a lot of stories about dramatic changes in the Republican Party. But it’s important to recognize that the Democrats are changing, too. One critical implication of this change is that the Democratic Party now has a different set of constituencies with different beliefs and priorities. As a result, Democratic candidates no longer feel as worried about moving to the left on cultural issues. They used to be concerned about alienating non-college-educated whites, who usually had relatively traditionalist views on gay rights, gun control, and abortion. Democrats today mostly represent a coalition of non-whites and college-educated whites who have more progressive cultural views. That’s allowed their party to become more united on issues and policy than it used to be. And it hasn’t worried nearly as much about appealing to non-college whites.”

“The change on the Democratic side is underappreciated. It’s been more gradual, and there haven’t been major breaks. There has not been a figure like Trump to symbolize a transformative break with the past, either. But the Democratic Party has gradually become quite different than it used to be. It not only has a different set of constituencies; it has a different approach to governing. One major change is in attitudes toward expertise. Democrats have come to stand for being the party of experts and science. They listen to people with credentials and make policies that experts recommend, whether environmental, healthcare, education, or civil-rights policy. The Democratic Party today is a technocratic party. It’s a party that believes in the rule of experts and expert-led institutions. That’s not necessarily the party of Harry Truman or George McGovern, but it’s definitely the party of Obama and Biden.”

“Party identification is the most stable of all political identities in America. The Democrats are the party of the rising young generation, so they hope that translates over time into a growing national share of the vote from one election to the next. They also hope that that pattern of generational stability in party identification holds. The rosy scenario for the Democrats is that it’s just a matter of time before Millennials and Gen Z are a big enough chunk of the electorate to give the Democrats an inherent advantage in elections. To temper that hope, I’d point out that this development will take a long time. Turnout rates for young voters are so much lower than for older voters that the median age of a U.S. voter is in the fifties. The oldest Millennials will take another 15 years to get to the median voter age. This shift isn’t going to change the electoral outlook for 2024 or 2028.”