Half of Gen Z Voters Support Harris, One-Third Back Trump”
Author George Orwell once said, “each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than one that comes after it.” With the 2024 Presidential Elections less than a month away, voting has become important more than ever. However, much of Millennial and Gen Z have polarizing opinions over the two presidential candidates.
Writers Stephanie Perry and Marc Trussler, in their 2024 article for NBC News, “Poll: Half of Gen Z Voters Support Harris, One-Third Back Trump” writes, “half of Gen Z voters say they’ll vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in November, while one-third say they’ll vote for former President Donald Trump…as young voters grapple with new economic and cultural challenges in 2024, including rising costs and concerns about debt that are prompting delays to some critical life events.”
Most of the individuals that are politicians in Washington D.C are within the Silent, Baby Boomer, and Gen X groups while a majority of voters make up the Gen X, Millennial, and Gen Z groups. The outcome of this upcoming election will impact not only incumbent generations but future generations as well. With concerns surrounding student loan debt, rising costs of living, and climate and political unrest both domestically and globally, it should come as no surprise that there is a sense of apathy and fatalism towards who is slated to become the next President of the United States.
Writer Edward Lempinen, in his 2024 article for UC Berkeley News, “Young Voters Have Growing Power, but Broken Politics Leave Them ‘Fatalistic,’” writes, “the values of Gen Z and millennial voters across the political spectrum are converging toward agreement on key issues… both young liberals and young conservatives want effective government action to solve challenges, while their parents and grandparents have been in conflict for a half-century over the role of government… many young voters appear to share a belief that fractured, dysfunctional government systems are incapable of addressing critical challenges that fall heavily on their generations. A sense of fatalism extends across the right, center and left.”
What does it say about the state of a country’s political landscape when the majority of its vital voter base feel as though they are on a slow-burn path towards destruction? What does it mean when a generation of voters feels abandoned, neglected, and betrayed by the generation that came before them? These are questions many young voters are asking themselves and these will be the same questions they will be asking in the voting booths.
