According to a federal survey of American youth, twelfth-grade boys are nearly twice as likely to identify as conservative versus liberal. In annual surveys over the last three years, roughly one-quarter of high school seniors self-identified as conservative or “very conservative” on the Monitoring the Future survey, a scholarly endeavor that dates to the 1970s. Only 13 percent of boys identified as liberal or very liberal in those years. The rise in conservatism among young men has trended upwards since the late 2000s. Back in the Carter years, youth, in general, leaned liberal.
But….while more young men identify as conservative, young women do not; they continue to identify as liberal. The share of 12th-grade girls who identified as liberal rose from 19 percent in 2012 to 30 percent in 2022. Only 12 percent of girls identified as conservative in last year’s survey, administered by the University of Michigan.
Although both charts show a polar opposite in political leanings among twelfth grade students, the one common denominator they show is the lack of moderate or ‘undecided’ political views.
Jean Twenge, an author and professor of psychology at San Diego State University, presented the data in her new book, “Generations.” She intentionally left out moderates and the “I don’t know” crowd to highlight, “Among liberals, the future is female,” she wrote. “And among conservatives, the future is male.”
TFG, his rhetoric and policies may have influenced both genders to choose a side. His presidency mobilized millions of women, outraged over words and alleged deeds that, to Trump’s critics, suggested unrepentant misogyny. More women embraced liberal politics in response to the conservative drift of the U.S. Supreme Court, a movement emblemized by a 2022 ruling that struck down the constitutional right to abortion.
TFG also energized many young, primarily white males, with his rhetoric, “overt hypermasculinity,” as one NPR analysis put it, and his frequent use of language one might overhear in a high school cafeteria.
“Donald Trump talks like a high school student. Maybe there’s a connection there,” said Robert Palacios, 21, a student at the Catholic University of America and president of District of Columbia College Democrats.
Although the Democratic Party is eager to win the vote of all young men, their platform stresses equality in gender and race. This platform has cost them some male support, especially among white people. A recent Politico article said, Democrats have a masculinity problem.
Delano Squires, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank stated, “I believe that traditional notions of masculinity are much more accepted within conservatism,” while feminist values “are clearly one of the driving forces of liberalism.”
