‘Cultural shift’ of young voters favored Donald Trump in 2024 election

The outcome of the 2024 election has a familiar look to 2020. Then, the Democrats successfully got Joe Biden elected to the presidency, won the U.S. House and split the Senate. Now, a massive swing has led to what some are calling “the greatest comeback in political history.”

The Republicans have a trifecta for at least two years; Donald Trump won the presidency while Republicans won the Senate and officially claimed 218 House seats for a GOP majority.

Much of the shift has been credited to younger voters, specifically young men in America, who have seen some of the biggest margin changes. In Arizona, young voters ages 18-29 made up 15% of the turnout in 2024 in comparison to the 16% in 2020, according to exit polling by NBC News and other media outlets.

According to exit polling analysis from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), white men ages 18-29 had an 11 percentage point shift toward Republicans, young Black men had a 20 percentage point swing and young Latino men saw a 13 percentage point change from 2020.

“I think there’s been a cultural shift in the amount of public support that Trump’s gotten, that he didn’t have (in 2020). His base didn’t have that enthusiasm, didn’t have that drive that I think the 2024 campaign did,” said John Wachter, an intern at Turning Point Action, in an interview. “I think Turning Point has had a huge impact on getting people who don’t usually vote or don’t usually participate in politics to really get involved. I think Trump is appealing to the younger audience, going on Joe Rogan, hanging out with Dana White and taking on Elon Musk. I think it’s grown the movement to be a lot more mainstream.”

Trump’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast in late October, his friendship with White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and appointing billionaire Musk to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency has seemingly had an impact on his appeal.

Women ages 18-29 also supported Trump more than in 2020, according to CIRCLE.

CIRCLE data showed young white and Black women saw a 12 percentage point increase in Republican support, and young Latinas showed a 9 percentage point increase.

“The further we get from Roe v. Wade, the more conservative we see this generation of women become,” said Carson Carpenter, the former president and current member of the College Republicans at Arizona State University. “Democrats just ran on the whole thing that Republicans want to take away your abortion rights? Arizona, quite literally, voted for President Trump, yet voted to protect the right to have an abortion in the state. So it just kind of contradicts their point that Republicans want to take away the ability to get an abortion.”

Charlotte Perez, chairwoman of Arizona Young Republicans Federation, said there were celebrations across the nation that showed the change in culture and excitement for moving in a different direction for Trump’s second term.

“I think what we saw in 2020 on college campuses compared to what we’re seeing now is just night and day. I mean, you literally saw college students celebrating the win of President Trump all over TikTok, and that is absolutely not something that we saw in 2020, and so I think that college students are finally able to speak out about what they believe in,” Perez said.

One of the campus celebrations that went viral was at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. Chants of “USA” erupted among the students. Wachter, who is a senior at GCU and joined the celebration, talked about the Christian school’s “contagious energy.”

“We have an amazing student body at GCU, and one of the things that I really love is how devoted to Christ the campus is. We are a very biblical-rooted school, and I think it was amazing just to see the pride and the energy that came from students when they realized that biblical values and our Christian worldview was not going to be destroyed by a radical agenda,” Wachter said. “We realized that we’re going to be able to keep our freedoms and be able to keep the success that America has had going. It was really inspiring to see.”