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.