Student Union
Gen Z: Politically Leaning to the Left
One in a series on Generation Z.
The newest designated generation — Gen Z — is skewing more liberal than previous generations, according to multiple sources, including Pew Research Center.
Most youths in any generation tend to think and vote closer to center and left than their elders, as people tend to become more conservative as they age, said William Frey, a senior fellow and demographer at the Brookings Institution. But Gen Z — including self-identified Gen Z Republicans — show political tendencies that align closer to Democratic ideologies, Pew reported.
In a report by news outlet Axios earlier this year, a majority of self-identified Gen Z Republicans said the government should be doing more to solve problems, a contrast from Republicans of other generations, who typically eschew government intervention.
While Gen Zers are projected to make up roughly 10% of the 2020 electorate, they will comprise 27% of the 2031 voting age population, according to Pew and Frey.
If the younger Republicans remain consistent in their beliefs as they get older, they have the potential to shift the Republican Party toward a more liberal ideology, Axios reported.
“It’s traditionally been the case that generations get more conservative as they get older,” Frey said. “But Gen Z is so different that even if they do become a little bit more conservative than they are, they’re going to probably change our politics and how we will act as a society.”
The top three voting issues for Gen Zers as of November 2018 were mass shootings, racial equality and immigration policy, according to the Harris Poll given exclusively to Axios. Those rankings were compared with generations X (1965-1980), baby boomer (1946-1964) and silent (1928-1945), which chose a different top three, including access to health care, terrorism/national security and the national debt.
Most Gen Zers were born only vaguely aware of 9/11, when terrorists crashed passenger airliners into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people.
Most millennials, which follows Gen X, and all older generations experienced 9/11 and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as politically conscious adults, when fears of terrorism and a desire for strong national security were at their highest.
According to the Harvard Public Opinion Project (HPOP), of eight possible foreign policy priorities, terrorism was the important issue to 17.1% of Gen Zers surveyed, compared to nearly 30% of millennials, who put terrorism as their first foreign policy priority.
What is more scary to Gen Zers is climate change. Gen Zers are coming of age during a time when the U.S. and the global population are increasingly hearing about and experiencing the effects of climate change and global warming. Six of 10 students age 18 to 22 named climate change as an important and stressful issue to them.
“Given current concentrations and ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases, it is likely that by the end of this century ... the world’s oceans will warm and ice melt will continue,” according to the U.N. 2018 climate report. “Average sea level rise is predicted as 24-30 cm by 2065 and 40-63 cm by 2100. Most aspects of climate change will persist for many centuries even if emissions are stopped.”
Over 70% of the Gen Zers polled by HPOP agree that climate change is a problem; 66% said it demands urgent action.
Gen Zers said they believe that climate change needs to be a foreign policy priority, not just a domestic one. While millennials generally support action on the climate issue, they still prioritize terrorism over environmental protection in the foreign policy realm, according to the HPOP.
“I think we’re going to be a very different country in this century than we were in the last century, and largely because of this younger generation and their racial diversity, and their different attitudes about social issues,” Frey said.
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Police arrest 33 at George Washington University protest encampment
Police in Washington cleared a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at George Washington University early Wednesday, arresting 33 people, authorities said.
Arrests were made on charges of assault on a police officer and unlawful entry, the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department said.
A congressional committee canceled a hearing on the university encampment Wednesday. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and Washington Police Chief Pamela Smith had been scheduled to testify about the city’s handling of the protest before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
University parents and faculty members gathered Wednesday afternoon for a press conference to condemn the handling of the protests by police and school leaders.
“The university clearly does not value the students at all and has endangered the safety of our children by unleashing officers dressed in full riot gear to assault and spray our children in their eyes with pepper spray,” said Hala Amer, whose son participated in the campus protests.
Police said they dispersed demonstrators because "there has been a gradual escalation in the volatility of the protest."
American University professor Barbara Wien said she stayed in the encampment with GW students. She described the student protesters as democratic and peaceful.
Police started to shut down the tent encampment after dozens of protesters marched to GW President Ellen Granberg's on-campus home on Tuesday night. Police were called, but no arrests were made.
Speakers at the conference called for Granberg’s resignation because, they alleged, she refused to meet and negotiate with student protesters.
“You keep inciting violence and ignoring the students,” Amer said about Granberg in an interview with VOA after the conference. “It will just lead to more violence. You need to talk to your students.”
GW officials warned students that they could be suspended for engaging in protests at the school’s University Yard, an outdoor spot on the campus.
"While the university is committed to protecting students' rights to free expression, the encampment had evolved into an unlawful activity, with participants in direct violation of multiple university policies and city regulations," a GW statement said.
More than 2,600 people have been arrested at universities across the country in pro-Palestinian protests, according to The Associated Press.
Students are calling on their university administrations to divest investments from Israel or companies with ties to Israel. Demonstrators have gathered in at least 50 campuses since April 17, carrying signs that read "Free Palestine" and "Hands off Rafah."
Rafah is Gaza’s southernmost city, where most of the territory’s population has clustered. The area is also a corridor for bringing humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.
Israel seized the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing on Tuesday, while shutting off the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing, drawing criticism from humanitarian groups. Israel said Wednesday that it had reopened Kerem Shalom.
The nationwide campus protests started in response to Israel's offensive in Gaza that began after Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages.
More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's offensive, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel warned it could "deepen" its operation in Rafah if talks failed to secure the release of the hostages.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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