FIGHT

There are big changes coming to American politics, courtesy of Generation Z.

Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Institute of Politics, notes that members of Gen Z—those born between roughly 1995 and 2015—are “the most diverse and most educated…in history.” Their numbers, at about 70 million, are now larger than the baby boomer generation. The diversity comes in several flavors: They are ethnically diverse, with an uptick in the numbers of multiracial people; they are less bound to binaries than people of the past, with fewer than 80% identifying as heterosexual; and their sense of history is different from that of the boomers and Gen Xers. The oldest of them were scarcely in school on 9/11, and they “have never known their country at peace.” All of this contributes to a generational ethos in which “Zoomers” are concerned with economic equity, curbing gun violence, relaxing laws concerning drugs, forgiving student debt, and a host of other issues on which, say, the GOP is not likely to endorse their views. On that note, Della Volpe observes, there’s a reason that young people aligned with the superannuated Bernie Sanders, who gave voice to their views: “Bernie’s politics are 90 percent targeted to younger people.” The Zoomers boosted the Democrats to a majority in the House in 2018, and, adds Della Volpe, “if voting were capped at age twenty-nine, meaning only Gen Z and the youngest millennials could participate, Joe Biden would have won ten times more electoral votes than Trump in 2020.” This suggests that politicians would be wise to devote their energies to attending to the interests of the young cohort. As the author concludes, their political tendencies will define the future of the nation, for all the efforts of their foes to suppress their vote.

A provocative pleasure for demography geeks and political trend-watchers.