Harvard Poll Shows Gen Z Turning on Dems as Right Storms Campuses

With their generation mired in debt, squeezed out of housing and confronting an ever-more uncertain economic future, young Americans looked to congressional Democrats to be their champions.

Instead, the party is floundering, mired in identity politics and progressive dogma while turning away from the issues that hurt the most.

The consequences are stark: A new Harvard Youth Poll shows 18- to 29-year-olds’ approval for Democrats has tanked to 23%, from 42% back in 2017. As Democrats crumble, figures like Charlie Kirk and groups like Turning Point USA are swelling to new heights, flooding social media and storming college campuses — long centers of liberal indoctrination — with a message of economic realism and a cultural counteroffensive that’s painting the youth vote red.

The Harvard Youth Poll, conducted March 14-25, 2025, by the Institute of Politics, found one party under threat: Congressional Republicans’ approval stood at 28 percent, and President Donald Trump’s rating barely budged from 31 percent, emphasizing Democrats’ sole tumble.

Just 15 percent of young voters think the country is on the right track; 51 percent say we’re off course — a devastating judgment about Democratic stewardship after years of broken promises. This isn’t a mere hiccup; this is a generational revolt, born out of an unshackled Democratic Party that has lost its hold over the demographic it used to own.

Young Americans are fed up. Inflation, which topped the list of concerns voters expressed in a 2022 Marist poll, continues to eat away at their financial stability; still, Democrats have leaned into cultural skirmishes — systemic racism, climate justice, gender debates — that seem distant to a generation struggling to make rent.

And the party’s failure to come through with practical answers, such as affordable housing or significant job creation, has exhausted faith. A 2021 survey by the Harvard Youth Poll found that 77% of Black youth, and 65% of college students, approved of President Joe Biden’s early actions. By 2025, just 25% believe the country was better off at the end of Biden’s presidency, according to the same poll.

A Gallup poll in March 2025 showed a 41-point decline in confidence among Democrats themselves and revealed a party that had lost its way. The Democratic National Convention in 2024 in Chicago, which was supposed to create enthusiasm among the youth, instead displayed elite priorities that came across as hollow to those who were economically challenged.

Democrats have had obvious cultural stumbles. Their obsession with identity-based policies — diversity quotas, pronoun battles — has driven young voters away, making them long for solutions, not sermons.

A March 2025 poll from NBC News found Democratic voters support fighting Trump rather than compromising by a two-to-one margin, but leaders ranging from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have given thumbs up to GOP-designed spending bills and enraged their base.

This disconnect has allowed conservatives to make historic inroads, especially in spaces long dominated by progressive ideology: social media and college campuses.

Conservative commentators are flooding the zone with a digital and on-the-ground blitz reshaping the youth playing field. Charlie Kirk, 31, founder of the group Turning Point USA (TPUSA), leads the charge, wielding a massive following on social media—5 million followers on Instagram, 4.8 million on Twitter, 3 million YouTube subscribers—to spread unapologetic conservative messaging.

His daily podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show, is one of Apple’s top 10 news podcasts, downloaded more than 120 million times in the past year, and is syndicated on 150 radio stations across the country.

Kirk’s blend of economic pragmatism and cultural critique is a popular proposition among young Americans feeling suffocated by progressive orthodoxy.

His 2024 book, Right Wing Revolution: How to Beat the Woke and Save the West, became a best seller and a megaphone to spread his influence among Gen Z voters.

On college campuses, previously breeding grounds of liberal indoctrination, TPUSA is putting on a conservative takeover.

The group, which started in 2012, is now on more than 3,500 high school and college campuses, has 650,000 student members and employs 450 full- and part-time staff members.

Kirk’s “You’re Being Brainwashed Tour” in 2024 visited 25 campuses, where he attracted thousands of students at swing states such as Wisconsin and Arizona. The tour, which included debates with left-leaning students and appearances by individuals like Vivek Ramaswamy, garnered over two billion views across social media, per TPUSA, and was also credited with increasing Gen Z voter turnout for Trump’s 2024 win.

At Purdue University in April 2025, Kirk’s “American Comeback Tour” filled venues, with similar numbers at Michigan State and Washington State University, signaling a change in campus culture.

“Gen Z is awake,” Kirk said at a Grand Canyon University event in October 2024, where students gobbled up TPUSA swag plastered with slogans such as “Republicans are hotter” and “dump your socialist boyfriend.”

The energy is real: TPUSA’s initial tour stop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison attracted 2,000 people, and the group’s Arizona State University chapter has reported skyrocketing interest in the wake of the election.

Jipson Zhang, president of the Young Americans for Freedom chapter at George Washington University, said his club had grown by 40 members this semester and that its events attracted wider audiences.

“There is momentum among young conservatives across this country,” Zhang said, echoing a trend that’s overturning decades of liberal hegemony on campuses.

This conservative effort is breaking the left’s monopoly on higher education. Colleges have long been derided for their promotion of single-minded ideologies, but increasingly they are now the stage for a battle where conservative voices are rising.

Launched in 2016, TPUSA’s Professor Watchlist calls out faculty accused of pushing leftist agendas, and its campus chapters are graced by speakers like Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson to challenge dominant narratives.

In fact, a 2018 report by THE BBC reported TPUSA’s “muscular, chest-out conservatism” had already penetrated 1,200 campuses, and its growth has only sped up, supercharged through wealthy donors and a $100 million annual budget.

The group’s AmericaFest in December 2024, headlined by Trump, Carlson and Shapiro, was a smash hit, cementing its cultural import.

Republicans are cashing in. Inside the Harvard Youth Poll were Trump’s unexpected gains among Black and Hispanic youth, demographics Democrats thought locked down.

Conservative messaging on economic opportunity, personal responsibility and resistance to progressive overreach is breaking through. A 2018 AP-NORC poll found that young voters were concerned about immigration and gun policy, issues on which Democrats once enjoyed an advantage — but now, economic concerns dominate, and Republicans are addressing the deficit with policies like tax cuts and deregulation, and have framed themselves as pro-worker in Trump’s second term.

A Yale Youth Poll in April 2025 validated the right-wing shift: 22- to 29-year-olds supported Democrats over Republicans by 6.4 points, but, by nearly 12 points, college-aged voters (18–21) preferred Republicans, a staggering reversal.

Democrats are on the ropes. Their inability to shift focus from culture war battles to economic concerns has left conservatives with an opportunity to redefine the youth vote. Through relentless social media activity and campus activism, Kirk and TPUSA are showing that conservative ideas—free markets, limited government, cultural sanity—can break through to a generation raised in progressive echo chambers. The stakes are monumental: If Democrats don’t shake their woke fixation and start talking about jobs, housing and costs, they’ll see young Americans ensure a conservative future. The Harvard Youth Poll isn’t merely ominous — it’s the death knell of a party that has lost its way.

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