By 2028, the U.S. Census Bureau predicts that more than half of eligible voters will be Generation Z or Millennials. However, Gen-Z — born between 1997 and 2012 — is politically divided along gender lines. As Gen Z gains influence in American politics, this split between young men and women has become a defining feature of contemporary politics.
In April 2025, NBC News conducted a poll of 20,000 people, measuring President Donald Trump’s approval ratings by gender and generation. The results revealed a gender-related divide among young voters aged 18 to 29: While 45% of men approved of the president, only 24% of women did — a 21-point gap.
This gender gap is smaller among older generations — nine points for voters aged 30 to 44, 13 points for voters between 45 and 64, and seven points for those aged 65 and older. The NBC poll’s results echo findings from several other sources across the political spectrum, including Brookings, Fox News and The Survey Center on American Life.
Some believe the ideological split between Republicans and Democrats has contributed to the divide. “I think both parties, especially the Republican Party, [has] become very gender-focused on securing this old-school system of masculine power and dominance — both in the household and in the government body,” Will Perkins ’26 said.
Republicans have increasingly advocated for women and men to revisit traditional gender roles, often using religion as a justification. In contrast, former Vice President and 2024 democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris ran advertisements that referred to birth control access, which said, “We won’t go back.” She promised to keep abortion and birth control safe and legal, combating traditional religious ideas around gender and reproductive rights.
“I think young women are very attuned to ways in which expectations around gender can be very limiting for women. So they might be really turned off by [Republican] demonstrations of masculinity,” said Josie Rodberg, history department chair.
Access to abortion has also become a major political issue after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Currently, 13 states — all of which have Republican governors — have passed laws that completely ban late-term abortions. It is possible that these changes in policy have pushed women away from the Republican Party.
“Republican views are more male dominated or male central and are taking away rights of women, so it makes sense that politics are divided by gender,” Kyle Speta ’26 said.
In October 2025, the independent news organization The 19th named young women the most liberal voting group in the country based on results from their annual political poll.
Republicans have tried to attract male voters to their side by blaming men’s social and economic problems on women. One example is former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who said on his show in 2019 that women outearning men has increased male incarceration rates and alcohol abuse.
“[Gender divides are] often fueled by politicians and media who capitalize on … framing the advancement of women as the cause of broader societal grievances, such as the decline of well-paid, secure jobs,” said Professor Heejung Chung, Director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, in an interview with Forbes.
Republicans also ostracized many nonbinary and transgender voters during Trump’s presidential campaign in 2024. During college and NFL football games, Trump ran an advertisement that said, “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.”
This messaging against women and the LGBTQ+ community has pushed both groups away from the Republican Party. In the 2024 elections, 86% of LGBTQ+ voters, regardless of gender or generation, voted for Harris alongside 61% of Gen Z women.
However, in many cases, conservative advertisements had a different effect on men. Some men began to believe that the Democratic Party was prioritizing other groups over them. “Democrats [are] not only abandoning men, but I also think they kicked them to the curb and spit on them. You’re telling men not to be men,” Joel, a Trump voter and college student, said in an interview with the Youtube channel titled More Perfect Union.
Alongside feelings of abandonment, some young men feel attacked by Democrat messaging around equality. “White men are, in some ways, cast into the role of villains,” said Ben Slater, Healthy Masculinity Group faculty advisor. “Young men tend to take on that role of being the bad or the shadow and find even a sense of excitement in it.”
Historically, schools provided a place for young people to challenge these ideas — but during the COVID-19 pandemic, this changed. “When you’re at school, you’re forced to hear everybody’s perspective,” Arie Kurtzig ’26 said. “With COVID, you’re only talking to your friends, you’re only on the social media that you want to see. It’s 100% an echo chamber — you’re hearing literally no external opinions.”
Additionally, social media usage rose among younger generations during the COVID-19 lockdown. Some believe that increased time on social media leads to increased polarization. “The entire algorithm system of Instagram or TikTok is trying to keep you on the app. So if you immediately swipe up when you hear something that you disagree with or ignore, they’re not going to show you those ideas anymore,” Perkins said.
Some speculate that increased social media usage during the lockdown pushed many young men towards the right with anti-establishment messaging. “Institutions, for maybe good reasons, [have] started to become more and more explicitly liberal in their ideology, … so being right wing is a way of being a rebel,” Slater said.
Many conservative influencers — including Andrew Tate — leverage these anti-establishment ideas to gain large followings on social media platforms. On X, Andrew Tate has accumulated more than 10 million followers, giving him a large platform to spread his ideas.
Tate has spoken out many times against higher education, referring to it as a scam.
According to a 2023 Pew Research Center poll, the percentage of male high school graduates who enroll in college dropped from 47% to 39% in the preceding 11 years. In contrast, the number of female high school graduates enrolled in college has only dropped from 52% to 48%.
The impact of distrust in education is clear in Truckee, which is located in a Republican-leaning county in California. “My neighbors lived in Tahoe, and the reason they moved back to San Francisco is what they noticed of their senior class. … Two guys were going to college out of a class of 60 guys from Truckee High. The rest were going to work jobs with their fathers because they believed that going to college was pointless,” Perkins said. “There’s a rise of blue collar jobs. No one wants to work a desk job — what’s masculine about that?”
In the past, college-educated voters tended to vote blue. For example, in the 2024 election, 55% of voters with a bachelor’s degree or higher voted for Kamala Harris, while 42% voted for Trump. With fewer men and more women attending college, the divide between male and female voters is set to increase.
However, America is showing signs of a different path. In the November 2025 New York mayor’s race, the gap between young men and women decreased from the 2024 presidential election — going from a 32-point difference to a 17-point difference — with 65% of young men voting for Mamdani.
Slater speculated that these results could represent a growing appeal of liberal candidates to young men. “Somebody like Mamdani, who’s rebellious [and] an outsider … appeals to a lot of young men,” he said.
Many Democratic candidates — including Mamdani — have centered their campaigns on economic issues such as affordability, which 64% of young voters ranked as one of their top three issues in a study by Tuft’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). “A lot of men care about affordability, so if you have that message of, ‘Let’s help everyone out,’ instead of playing to a specific group with identity politics, it works out a lot better,” Augie Wintroub-Hansen ’26 said.
Even so, some worry the current political polarization threatens the future of America. “Now is not the time to mince words: Gen Z is headed down a path that could threaten the future stability of American democracy and society. This is a five-alarm fire, and we need to act now,” said Jordan Schwartz, student chair of the Harvard Public Opinion Project on a youth poll.
By redirecting political policies and commentary towards shared everyday realities that all young people face, regardless of gender, some believe America has the chance to unite Gen Z voters. “One thing [often] left out of the conversation is the very real ramifications of things like access to health care [and] affordable childcare,” Rodberg said. “And so when you start to focus on those economically related issues, that might also be a way to bridge the gender gap.”