A key group of voters that helped return President Donald Trump to the White House is turning on him, according to a political researcher.
Rachel Janfaza, the founder of the Gen Z-focused newsletter The Up and Up, told host Katie Phang on Saturday’s episode of “Katie Phang News” that young men who were among Trump’s loudest backers in 2024 have soured on his second term.
“They look at the Trump administration, including a lot of those young men who were his most vocal supporters in 2024, and say, ‘Since he’s taken office, inflation has gone up. The economy has gotten worse. The job market has gotten worse. There’s corruption beyond belief. He’s building a ballroom. He is now the establishment that he sought to tear down,’” Janfaza said.
Janfaza drew her findings from nine focus groups with more than 70 young people ages 17 to 33 in 28 states and Washington, D.C. She said cost of living, inflation, war and corruption unite the generation across party lines.
She said many young voters “were fed up with the status quo and swung right in favor of President Trump” in 2024, adding, “It is for that same reason that they are now boomeranging back away from him.”
“Now that he’s in power, it’s really hard once you’re the incumbent to retain that level of cultural cachet,” Janfaza said.
Asked how young people define corruption, Janfaza said they see it as “the people in power are enriching themselves or getting ahead in some way at the expense of the everyday person.” She said the focus groups raised that concern about the military action in Venezuela, with participants suspecting “this is just a way for Trump to enrich himself.”
But Janfaza said the shift away from Trump “doesn’t necessarily mean they’re moving to Democrats,” because the party “still reads as a little bit stale, a little bit out of touch.”
She also warned that turnout could slip this fall. “I think we could see lower youth voter turnout than other recent midterms,” she said, explaining that economic anxiety has become “more of a constant reality rather than something that is a sort of one-time scary event” like the Parkland shooting in 2018 or the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
She added that young voters are tired of campaigns built around attacking Trump, since “that’s the only topic of conversation in politics for their entire life.”
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