An ideological shift? Gen Z teens identify as more conservative than their parents at higher rates than millennials did

Never-before-seen Gallup and Walton Family Foundation data shows that Gen Zers are twice as likely to identify as more conservative than their parents than millennials were 20 years ago.

A note to readers

Today marks the second edition in a series based on never-before-seen data points from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation’s Gen Z Panel, an ongoing partnership to examine young Americans’ experiences in and outside the classroom. These data sets have been pulled from prior research, but have not previously been reported on. Last week, I covered the gap between Gen Z and millennials when it comes to a desire to go to college.

Thanks to a Walton Family Foundation grant, I’ve had the opportunity to conduct listening sessions with potential young voters. I’ll be doing much more of that and publishing anecdotal takeaways in the lead up to the 2024 election.

These quantitative data sets provide another vantage point into the psyche of today’s youngest potential voters. I hope you find them as interesting as I do.

An ideological shift? Gen Z teens identify as more conservative than their parents at higher rates than millennials did 20 years ago

Gen Z teens are twice as likely to identify as more conservative than their parents than millennials were 20 years ago, according to a Gallup and Walton Family Foundation study conducted last fall. Though the number of Gen Z teens who feel this way remains relatively small, the data signals a slight generational shift toward conservatism, with the biggest jump coming from males and those who identify as Republican.

When presented with the question, “thinking about social and political views, how do your views compare to those of your parents?,” 14% of 13-17-year-old Gen Zers said their views are “more conservative,” 63% said their views “about the same” and 23% said their views are “more liberal.”

Meanwhile, when asked the same question 20 years ago, 7% of 13-17-year-old millennials said their views were “more conservative,” 72% said their views were “about the same” and 22% said their views were “more liberal.”

The percentage of Gen Z teens who say they have “more conservative” views than their parents is highest for survey participants who identify as male and Republican.

• 19% of Gen Z teens who identify as male said they have “more conservative” views than their parents, whereas 14% of Gen Z teens who identify as female said they have “more conservative” views than their parents, and just 7% of Gen Z teens who identify as other said they have “more conservative” views than their parents.

• 34% of Gen Z teens who identify as Republican said they have “more conservative” views than their parents, whereas 16% of Gen Z teens who identify as Independent said they have “more conservative” views than their parents, 11% of Gen Z teens who identify as Democrat said they have “more conservative” views than their parents, and 12% of Gen Z teens with a “Don’t Know” party identification said they have “more conservative” views than their parents.

Beyond a seven point jump (+7%) for Gen Z teens who identify as more conservative than their parents as compared to millennials, there’s a nine point drop (-9%) in the percentage of Gen Z teens who say their views are about the same as their parents as compared to millennials.

This data is from the Gallup Walton Family Foundation ‘Gen Z Voices’ survey conducted between October 23 and November 1, 2023. While the survey question is rooted in small c “conservatism” and small l “liberalism,” it comes as recent polling has found that former Republican President Donald Trump is performing better with young voters than Democratic President Joe Biden.

Graphic courtesy of Gallup.

To contextualize Gallup’s data, I checked in with a few leaders in the youth vote space, each of whom spends their days analyzing the ins and outs of Gen Z and their politics (though they tend to focus on young Americans 18 and older, they’re close in proximity to youth culture).

All three emphasized that older Gen Zers have already shown a willingness to buck traditional paradigms. They said the data is not surprising; in part, social media and an online environment that incentivizes and pushes extreme content and uplifts the loudest voices has contributed to Gen Z’s collective shift away from their parents’ ideologies. They also noted that this ideological shift doesn’t necessarily correlate with a shift in party identification — and may not last beyond Gen Z teens’ high school years, though it could. Anecdotally, I’ve found that Gen Z teens in particular are less likely to identify within the confines of a subscribed set of labels and values — whether that be party affiliation or otherwise.

At 27-years-old, Danielle Butcher Franz sits right on the cusp of the Gen Z and millennial cut-off. She identifies as more conservative than her parents. “I grew up in a very progressive household, began identifying as conservative in my early teens,” she said.

Butcher Franz is the CEO of the American Conservation Coalition, a center-right organization pushing for climate solutions. The very existence of the organization, which emphasizes the value of conservation, complicates the tired trope that all young Americans align on the issues they prioritize, the values they have, and the party they belong to (and that all climate-focused activists are liberal).

“I think we're seeing that Gen Z is very willing to question cultural norms. They are not monolithic, and their views don’t fit neatly into traditional boxes. Gen Z is willing to break rank to best align themselves with their values. We've seen this demonstrated very clearly in the way that young conservatives have pushed their party forward on climate change -- these young conservatives know they don't align with the left on climate, and yet they aren't willing to accept the status quo from the right, either,” said Butcher Franz.

“Young Americans notoriously identify as more left-of-center, but there's a growing number of young people pausing to reexamine their values and the narratives they've accepted. They're willing to look at politics with a critical eye and recognize when something isn’t having its intended effect. Whether that's on climate change, birth control, or any number of other issues, Gen Z is more interested in solutions than they are in being placed in a box.”

According to Butcher Franz, this doesn’t mean all conservative young people identify as Republicans or that all liberal young people say they’re a Democrat.

“Gen Z seems to divorce their values and ideological leanings from the major political parties,” said Butcher Franz. “Where you used to be able to reasonably assume that progressives are democrats and conservatives are republicans, that’s no longer the case for a lot of young people. In my own work, I’ve observed more and more young people who hold conservative values, but aren’t eager to identify as Republicans,” she said.

26-year-old Joe Mitchell, who is a Republican, founded Run GenZ to support young conservatives running for state and local office. In turn, the group works with many candidates running for school board. Asked about a generational shift toward conservative values for Gen Z teens, Mitchell stressed how this is manifesting for young Republicans in high school classrooms and in young people looking to make changes to standards in some K-12 school systems.

“What we hear from the GenZ folks that we talk with is that a lot of their classmates and they themselves are really pushing back on what they see as this oppressive liberal social culture in schools,” Mitchell said, referencing the K-12 culture war that’s played out across the country.

Santiago Mayer, who runs the left-leaning youth voter engagement organization Voters of Tomorrow, said social media has undoubtedly “amplified extremes” complicating Gen Z’s collective social and political ideologies. The 22-year-old has friends who are liberal, but who look at social media, see ideologies further to the left than theirs,’ and say, “‘Maybe I’m a moderate.’”

Yet at the same time, he stressed that Gen Z’s point-of-reference is different as compared to millennials.

“Millennials grew up with the Bill Clintons, George Bush’s of the world. There was a small center Overton window,” he said, in comparison to today’s political spectrum which includes visible leaders like Trump and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. “It’s a completely different environment,” he said.

Mayer also stressed what he called a “negative partisan feedback loop,” where Gen Zers are identifying less with either party, and may feel they have a different worldview than that of their parents (for good reason, there are new circumstances and modes of communication).

“We’ve seen it with older Gen Zers who take on a libertarian approach and ideology in high school,” Mayer said. “If your parents are ‘resistance Democrats,’ and you see content pushing you in that direction, you may want to rebel,” he said.

Anecdotally, Mayer sees this most with young men, he said — though he’s not sure it will last once high schoolers get to college.

“There’s socially conservative coded stuff in high school, with video games,” Mayer said. “I mean obviously you have the Barstool Sports’ of the world. You have your Joe Rogan’s. I hesitate to say they’re turning people into conservatives… I don’t think they are, but their language is conservative coded, and there [could be] a contrast with parents who are mainstream liberal.”

A bit about Gallup’s methodology

According to Gallup, they collected responses “via web survey, with invitations sent by email to members of the Gallup Panel, a probability-based panel that includes roughly 100,000 members." The respondents included 12-18-year-olds living at home with parents or guardians, as well as 18-26-year-olds. To reach the younger Gen Zers, Gallup said they, “contacted adult members of the Gallup Panel who indicated they have at least one child between the ages of 12 and 18 living in their home."

“This study explores comparisons to data collected across multiple waves of the Gallup Youth Survey conducted from 2003 through 2005, among 13- to 17-year-old millennials. For waves conducted during 2003 and 2004, the Gallup Youth Survey was conducted via web surveys, using an online research panel designed to be representative of the entire U.S. population. For the wave conducted in 2005, results are based on a combination of mail and web surveys with a randomly-selected national sample of 13- to 17-year-old teenagers from households in the Gallup Panel,” according to a Gallup spokesperson.

Both datasets were “weighted to correct for unequal selection probability and nonresponse; samples were weighted to match the U.S. population according to gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, educational attainment, and Census region,” Gallup said.