Less than two years ago, Gen Z was renamed. Donald Trump had been re-elected. Exit polls suggested that young voters—especially teenagers—had helped bring about the Republican victory. Rather suddenly, a generation associated with climate activism and trigger warnings became known for manosphere podcasts, fiscal conservatismand gender relations are so pervasive that they have contributed to national fears about fertility rates.
But a lot has changed since 2024. Trump has started (so far inappropriate) war with Iran, which he said would not happen. His administration’s handling of the Epstein files, in which his name appears prominently, has been criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike. He vowed to lower the price of gas and groceries; instead, they keep rising. His approval rating has taken a hit record lowand he is losing favor among key voting blocs such as independents and Latinos. Journalists and political analysts continue to speculate and discuss: Will the young people who moved to the right side crawl back to the other side?
That might depend, it turns out, on whether you’re talking about young men—or even younger men. Spring 2026 Yale Youth Pollreleased last month, found that a majority of respondents—and about 70 percent of young adults—disapproved of Trump. Even with men under 30, the president lost ground compared to the Yale poll in 2025. But the data also revealed a dividing line: Among men ages 23 to 29, support for Democrats rose 14 percent. Among men ages 18 to 22, it it fell by a certain percentage—even as their approval of Trump declined somewhat. Women in that younger age group, meanwhile, make up one more liberal group: more left-leaning than the slightly older Gen Z women.
Of course, you can divide and dice any group in different ways and get the so-called “small generation.” But this poll highlighted something I’ve heard in my reporting before: Gen Z, which includes people born from 1997 to 2012, is divided into older and younger groups who tend to behave very differently. Rachel Janfaza, who researches and writes about this age group, has referred to them as Gen Z 1.0 and 2.0. Generation researcher Meghan Grace described me as “Big Zs” and “Little Zs.” Whatever you call them, the division seems to make sense. You can think of Little Zs as the angrier siblings of their Big Z counterparts: they’re more divided, less reliable, and even more willing to disrupt the status quo.
When you’re young, everything around you can shape your nascent beliefs: your family, your neighborhood, but also the state of the world at that point in time, Patrick Egan, a professor of public policy at NYU, told me. Your politics, in youth and early adulthood, are in the process of “lightening.” Just look at Gen Xers, he said, who came of age when Ronald Reagan was enjoying a popular presidency in the mid-1980s; perhaps as a result, the group leans more Republican than other generations.
Little Z and Big Z grew up around the same time—but in different worlds. Big Z may have texted their friends on the phone; The little Z’s grew up with smartphones, flocking to TikTok’s content and algorithms. Big Z may have looked up the assigned reading on SparkNotes, but Little Z could use AI to write a high school paper. Perhaps most importantly, the Big Z were already in college, or had graduated, when COVID hit. That does not mean that the tragedy was not difficult for many of them. But they had really matured—and gained self-understanding—before the blow. Z’s kids went to middle or high school in 2020. They were at home when they should have been making new friends, breaking the rules and getting grounded, falling in love early.
The Little Z’s who hated attending Zoom classes and missing the ad may have appreciated that many Republicans were criticizing school closings, disparaging mask orders, and talking about personal freedom. More broadly, their anger at decision-makers may have fed the anti-establishment drive that researchers have found especially among younger Zoomers, who are “not so tuned in,” Egan said, “to the traditional ways that people even a little older than them have been thinking about politics for a long time.” Most of them, he told me, seem like Trump is positioning himself as a normal political outsider—despite the fact that he’s a second-term president.
It is clear that MAGA’s thoughts have spoken to men of Little Z in particular. Maybe that’s because many Republicans put a certain brand of masculinity on the pedestal at a time when these men were still developing a sense of individualism. They may have heard GOP leaders on “bro podcasts,” Grace said, or seen them partnering with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and understood the effort as an invitation: “Yes, your voice matters. And we want it on our side.” Now these men have finished high school. They think about how they will be able to make a living. They see that job growth is happening more in traditionally female-dominated fields—health care, retail, social services—rather than, say, manufacturing, Egan told me. And they still hear Trump claiming that he will fix the economy.
Republicans may have spoken to the women of Little Z, too — with their money worries, their COVID trauma, their frustration with the status quo. But in another way they have been chasing the girls. The year 2021 Dobbs the decision that repealed abortion protections could be a particular blow to women who are now in their early 20s. Grace and her colleague Corey Seemiller have been studying the political ideology of Zoomers for years, and in 2021, they found that the men of Little Z were starting to move to the right compared to the men of Big Z. But they saw no change at all among women. Then Dobbs happened, and the young women lurched left. Maybe they were old enough to have sex but young enough to be terrified of pregnancy, and the idea that men would tell them what to do about it.
Much has been written about the gender gap in Gen Z politics. But the divide appears to be particularly striking among Little Z. Based, in part, on the results of the Yale poll, “it may be more pronounced than expected,” Egan said. That difference could have a big impact on not only the upcoming election but also how Little Z continues to relate. Grace and Seemiller surveyed young women and found that, of the respondents who did not plan to marry, a third said it was because they were afraid of losing their freedom. Many of them, he said, feel like the men around them have already voted to take away their freedom.
But Little Z’s beliefs, as brilliant as they may be, are not so clear-cut. Little Z is different from Big Z because they’ve gone through different developmental stages—but also because they’re younger. And many types of political people, regardless of party, could still respond to their sense of disenfranchisement, their intellectual skepticism, their hunger for truth. Egan has heard young voters speak glowingly not only of Trump but of Zohran Mamdani, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “There’s a lot of choice,” Egan told me — more so than when he, a member of Gen X, was younger. In his day, the 20-year-old didn’t have many different voices – on TikTok, CNN, or Fox News, or in the halls of Congress – to acknowledge their specific struggles. Now, he said, one “can find messages that really speak to that apathy, that sense of turmoil.”
If Trump continues to break his campaign promises, even Little Z men may turn to other leaders. Intermediate terms are just around the corner. Young people don’t turn out in large numbers, historically, but Grace reminded me that in 2018 and 2022, Zoomers had the highest turnout in the midterm elections for their age group. They are not like other generations; they don’t even look alike. One day, the Little Zs won’t be little anymore—and their elders may be surprised by who they’re growing up to be.
