Young people have long leaned left. But some Gen Zers — including those raised in progressive homes — are questioning the status quo and realizing they’re not actually Democrats.
Although more than half of Gen Z do not identify with a political party, more than a fifth (21%) identify as Republican.
The Post spoke to four young voters who left the left about their political journeys:
Becky Oliveira: ‘I was exhausted by the constant anger’ on the left
If you met Becky Oliveira when she was a teenager, she would have told you she was a leftist and a radical feminist.
“I was a very emotional, hormonal, angry little girl, and this was an ideology that really appealed to that because it was somewhere to direct that anger to fighting against power structures,” the 23-year-old from Queens told The Post.
Although her parents weren’t particularly political, Oliveira said her upbringing was dominated by left-wing messaging — from her school, her peers, and especially the internet.
“I was your typical Tumblr leftist, and I was raised on gender theory through social media,” she said.
When Donald Trump won in 2016, the then-15-year-old was devastated.
“I spent the whole day crying my eyes out because I was so scared. I thought that hordes of KKK members were going to come and shoot me and my friends because I’m Hispanic,” she recalled.
But now, in 2024, she plans to support Trump: “The whole ‘orange man bad’ thing is very tired and very played out, and I think more young people are realizing that.”
Oliveira’s political transformation was propelled by the Covid-19 lockdown, when “something inexplicable clicked” while she was a student at St. Francis College.
Vaccine mandates and Black Lives Matter protests devolving into riots in the summer of 2020 had her suddenly questioning everything, Oliveira said.
“I started getting very exhausted by the constant anger,” she said. “I guess I just started to mature as a person, and I started to realize that a lot of my reactions were based more on emotion than in fact.”
Since the pandemic, Oliveira has done a complete political 180 — joining the New York Young Republicans Club and getting involved in local politics. She presently works in communications for Republican New York City council member Inna Vernikov.
“I just woke up to the groupthink that was on the left, and I decided I could no longer subscribe to this chic mentality of following whatever the current thing is.”
Logan Dubil: ‘Gen Z men are leaning conservative’
Growing up, Logan Dubil defaulted to his friends’ and his family’s left-leaning politics.
“I definitely aligned with liberal ideology,” the 23-year-old said. “I was introduced to those values by my friends and online, and it seemed to be the popular thing, so I just decided to go along with that.”
Dubil — who was raised in Pennsylvania, where his father supported Bernie Sanders — first began to question the left-wing views he inherited after the 2016 election.
“After Trump won, I started to do more research because I saw that a lot of people were either really upset or really excited about it, and I wanted to understand why,” said Dubil, who is studying marketing at Point Park University.
“I started doing my own research, and I realized I was actually on the right,” he recalled.
After looking into the pro-life position, Dubil realized he was not actually pro-choice. He also says he woke up to gender ideology, which turned him off from the left: “It’s basically being shoved down your throat, and a lot of people are getting fed up with it.”
In the years since, he’s become a vocal Republican and often shares his views on social media — and it’s caused a rift in his family.
“My dad always lectures me about how he doesn’t agree with where I stand,” Dubil said. “Some extended family members have even blocked me on social media. I’m really big on family, so it’s sad to see that people who disagree with me are willing to cut me out of their lives just because of a political disagreement.”
Nonetheless, Dubil is standing firm.
Although he supported Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary, he is now throwing his support behind Trump — and he expects many of his peers will do the same.
“I have a lot of friends who had the same experience,” he said. “Gen Z men are leaning conservative, and I think that will continue, especially since a lot of political commentators on the right are doing a really good job of reaching them on social media.”
Maxwell: ‘DEI in my workplace was a wakeup call’
In Maxwell’s mind, the Democrats were always the “good guys” — until they weren’t.
The 27-year-old Manhattan resident was raised in Colorado and took after his father’s progressive politics.
“I definitely identified with my dad’s political leanings, and fully believed that the Democrats were the good guys fighting for very common sense causes,” Maxwell, who asked to withhold his last name for privacy reasons, told The Post.
Because he supported gay marriage, environmental protections and limiting American involvement in the war in Iraq, Maxwell saw the Democratic Party as his logical home.
But, while working for a consulting firm during the pandemic, his eyes were opened to DEI initiatives rolled out in the summer of 2020.
“The CEO called an all-hands meeting to talk about diversity initiatives, which I always assumed were good,” he recalled.
But, Maxwell claimed, the CEO announced that he would no longer be mentoring anyone who was white or male, in order to foster “inclusion” in the company.
“It suddenly became very clear to me that there are leftist activists in control of universities and major corporations, including the one that I worked for,” he recalled.
Since then, Maxwell has been a vocal critic of affirmative-action hiring policies, which he describes as “racist”; vaccine mandates he calls “draconian,” and office closures during the pandemic.
Although he voted for Biden in 2020, he now considers it “a mistake.” He’s undecided between Trump and Kennedy in 2024 and says the most important issues to him as a voter are getting immigration under control, passing business-friendly regulations and restoring law and order in American cities.
For Maxwell, who now works for a software startup, his politics make life harder: “It’s gotten more and more difficult to live in the high-caliber technology world, because there’s a very strong monoculture of left wing politics and coastal elites.”
Grace Guentzel: ‘I had never thought through the Republican positions.’
Grace Guentzel was raised by Democrats, and so she became a Democrat.
“My family is pretty liberal, and I surrounded myself with very liberal Democrats,” the 20-year-old Gilbert, Arizona, resident told The Post. “I just agreed with them initially because it was how I was raised.”
Growing up in Minnesota, she was taught to be resolutely pro-choice and anti-gun — but a “slow and gradual realization over the past couple years” has led her to become a Republican.
“I don’t think I really explored the nuances,” Guentzel said. “I couldn’t even fathom pro-life and pro-gun standpoints before. I didn’t understand both points of view. I just accepted how I was raised.”
Being a Democrat was expedient — and the status quo in her community. But when she went to Arizona State University to study history, Grace began to purposefully engage with the other side.
“I finally started to deliberately seek out different opinions,” she said. “When I started studying history and economics and global politics at school, I just got exposed to so many viewpoints and different ways of thinking about things.”
As she started to reason through issues like abortion, she said, the scales fell from her eyes: “I don’t eat meat, but I used to be very pro-choice, and I realized, what makes a fetus less worthy of life than a cow?”
Now Guentzel identifies as a Republican.
Although her family “doesn’t really like [her] shift in politics,” they avoid discussing the topic. But some peers have cut her out because of her views: “I’ve lost some friends, but I’m OK with that because those aren’t people who value debates and conversations.”
Going into the 2024 election, she’s undecided on whether she will vote for Kennedy or Trump, but says she’s looking for a candidate who will solve the border crisis, protect gun rights and keep trans women out of women’s sports. And one thing is for sure: “I definitely won’t vote for Biden.”
