Rechtsruck
The youth vote shifts right, where Trump stands compared to 2024, a Democratic Tea Party, Nate Silver's pollster ratings, the Jewish vote, Dems' 2026 targets, tiny teams, RIP congestion pricing
No. 350 | February 21st, 2025
📊 Public Opinion
Derek Thompson takes a look at how the pandemic drove young voters to the right. (As they do, the Germans even coined a word for the shift right: Rechtsruck.)
“Young people who cast their first ballot in 2024 were “more jaded than ever about the state of American leadership,” according to the Harvard Political Review. A 2024 analysis of Americans under 30 found the “lowest levels of confidence in most public institutions since the survey began.” In the past decade alone, young Americans’ trust in the president has declined by 60 percent, while their trust in the Supreme Court, Wall Street, and Congress has declined by more than 30 percent.”
And in Germany, the right-wing AfD leads among the youngest voters in Sunday’s national election:
Thompson goes further into this with charts and data, showing a shift primarily driven by young men. Here’s his summation of the evidence.
John Della Volpe sees evidence that young voters may have cooled in their enthusiasm for Trump and Musk since the inauguration.
Trump's overall approval ratings remain positive in this assessment by the Crystal Ball, with a comparison to how Trump performed in the 2024 election by group. Trump has better net approval ratings among younger voters, Democrats, and Black voters compared to his performance in 2024.
The long-standing dynamic of Democrats being happy with their party leaders while Republicans are unhappy with theirs seems to have reversed. Democrats are unhappy with their leaders in Congress, and our own polling with Puck shows Democrats overwhelmingly don’t think party leaders are doing enough to oppose Trump. We’ll see if this leads to a fractious primary season or even Democrats’ own version of the Tea Party.
🇺🇲 2024
Nate Silver is out with his pollster ratings after the 2024 cycle. Echelon Insights continues to rank in the top tier of political polling firms. Here’s his overall take on how well the polls performed in 2024.
A deep-dive into Jewish-American polling and voting patterns in 2024.
🇺🇲 2026
A look at what could be the target seat map for the Democrats for the 2026 midterms.
🤖 Artificial Intelligence
There’s a vibe shift in Silicon Valley towards “tiny reams,” replacing bloated venture-funded headcounts with AI.
“The old Silicon Valley model dictated that start-ups should raise a huge sum of money from venture capital investors and spend it hiring an army of employees to scale up fast. Profits would come much later. Until then, head count and fund-raising were badges of honor among founders, who philosophized that bigger was better.
But Gamma is among a growing cohort of start-ups, most of them working on A.I. products, that are also using A.I. to maximize efficiency. They make money and are growing fast without the funding or employees they would have needed before. The biggest bragging rights for these start-ups are for making the most revenue with the fewest workers.
Stories of “tiny team” success have now become a meme, with techies excitedly sharing lists that show how Anysphere, a start-up that makes the coding software Cursor, hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue in less than two years with just 20 employees, and how ElevenLabs, an A.I. voice start-up, did the same with around 50 workers.”
🔬 Academia
Replacing the SAT with more subjective measures perpetuates a bias towards “cultural fit” at elite firms.
📰 Data Journalism
Nate Silver’s data dive on winners and losers from now-canceled NYC congestion pricing.
📰 Media Habits
What do we know about the top creators on TikTok?
