Will Gen Z put Trump back in the White House?

If young Americans were hosting a New Year’s Eve party, they would much rather clink glasses with former president Donald Trump than with current White House occupant Joe Biden, according to a new poll.

- Bhagyashree Garekar

But if they had to choose a boss, friend, neighbour or schoolteacher for their child, they would go for Mr Biden.

Who would these voters, belonging to America’s most progressive generation ever, pick as president on Nov 5, 2024?

The answer was Trump, according to a Dec 8 poll of voters aged under 30 by Emerson College.

In recent months, more and more polls have placed Trump over Mr Biden. Analysts caution, of course, that it is too early for accurate predictions about a distant race in a polarised nation.

But what these data sets do say with greater certainty is that young voters are not exactly waiting with bated breath for election day. Impatient with the same old tropes and breathing the oxygen of diversity, America's young voters are singularly unenthused about the upcoming presidential election.

For the two likely White House contenders old, white men this is bad news. It puts both of them outside an imminent transformative moment in US history.

Nearly half the voters in 2024 will be under 45 years old, according to projections by the American think-tank Brookings Institution. For the first time, Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) and millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) combined could account for as many voters as the baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) and the older generations which have traditionally accounted for the majority of voters for decades.

The trait that most distinguishes the young voters from all previous generations is diversity in appearance as well as attitudes.

More than 70 per cent of the baby boomers are white, but 55 per cent of millennials and only slightly more than half of Gen Z are. The two younger generations are also better educated, less religious, less inclined to marry and have children, and more supportive of gender diversity.