A Rightward Turn: Inside Gen Z’s Ideological Realignment

By Nina Lewandowska

In recent years, democracies have been continuously voting right-wing politicians into office. This abrupt shift towards conservatism is prompting people to wonder what has changed between 2020 – the year when young voters were at their most progressive – and now. Is it possible that the West’s views have changed so drastically over just four years, or is there something else at play here? As it turns out, Generation Z might have something to do with it. 

The Influx of Gen Z voters 

Since 2020, a large fraction of Gen Z youth has entered adulthood. Over the past five years, researchers have observed an increase in citizens aged between eighteen and twenty-nine voting for right-wing politicians. 31 per cent of women and 34 per cent of men in 2020, shifting to 37 per cent of women and over 43 per cent of men in 2024, voted for the Republican presidential candidate in the US. The differences between the genders of voters are very clear when we compare these statistics, but it is difficult to pinpoint what exactly caused them. Similar voting behaviours have been observed in countries like Germany, Poland and South Korea, which all exhibit higher percentages of male far-right voters than female ones. 

Explaining the Rightward Shift Among Young Men Compared to Women 

Some might argue that these men are voting for the far right purely because they are behaving as society expects them to. The notion that ‘boys will be boys’ suggests that these men will be more likely to lean towards right-wing politics because they feel the need to experience risk, navigate the boundaries of early adulthood or that they simply care less about societal norms than their female counterparts. 

These arguments hint that young men are naturally more likely to vote for the far right and that we have nothing to worry about because they will simply grow out of it. Thanks to new research, we can say that this will not be the case. By comparing voting patterns of the previously mentioned age range across past generations, we can see that this phenomenon is a Gen Z specific issue. Yes, these rates have been rising over time – this is most visible when we look at young Millennial voting tendencies, but none of these shifts have been comparable to the jump we see with Gen Z voters. 

The reasons for these shifts have yet to be examined. This is why people tend to connect these behaviour differences to the Covid-19 pandemic and the time during which a significant part of Gen Z spent in online school without much contact with their peers. Many of them turned towards influencers in search of social stimulation, even before their sense of media literacy had developed. 

Does Staying in Shape Make You Politically Conservative? 

In an effort to stay in shape during their time at home, people – young Gen Zers – started following fitness influencers on social media. Many of these content creators, who stayed politically vague, even up until recent months, have made some comments or posted things which made their political stances clear. After such instances, some people make the choice to stop consuming their content, but very large numbers of impressionable young people stay. 

Male fitness coaches, who are less likely to be politically neutral than female influencers, aim their content at young men, who are most inclined to use social media. These fitness influencers consistently encourage right-wing values in their male audience through subtle or not-so-subtle messaging. This can start as advice on their form or a particular exercise, but can quickly shift towards the idea that you must always be strong and manly, which can end up as a message that being anything but a hypermasculine Republican is wrong and weak. There are no studies proving that the more right-leaning or manly you are, the better you will be at fitness, but, nonetheless, society has accepted this as a general truth. 

This does not by any means suggest that doing something as insignificant as looking up videos about the gym will make you vote far right in the next election. Many factors go into shaping someone’s political opinion, and they do not necessarily have to correlate with the content we consume in our free time. What is true, however, is that male fitness influencers do tend to lean more right-wing, and consuming large amounts of content from these groups will make it easy to accept and internalise the political ideologies which they project onto you every day. 

A Generation Split By Gender 

Nevertheless, it is still hard to say whether Gen Z’s voting statistics were a one-time phenomenon caused by their frustration with their government or a more permanent vision for the world’s political climate. All we can do for now is to wait and see if this rightward shift sticks or if we have found ourselves in a constant loop of political dissatisfaction.

Sources: Politico, The Atlantic, The Guardian, CNN, WIRED, European Consortium for Political Research, CT Mirror

Written by: Nina Lewandoska

Edited by: Nina Gush & Sarah Valkenburg