Gen Z voters have all but abandoned their support for President Trump, according to a new poll from YouGov and The Economist.
Though Trump saw an unprecedented spike in approval with the age group late last year, this has quickly dried up. By July 21, his approval rating sat at just 28 percent among Gen Z voters, a staggering 62-point drop from its peak just eight months ago.
Gen Z’s sense of buyer’s remorse for the president set in almost immediately following his re-election, and has only gotten worse.
The president favorability among the age group peaked at +19 on November 16. It started to drop even before the inauguration and sat at a modest +5 on January 25. By February 6, just two weeks into his term, it had dropped to -19.
According to YouGov’s poll, his ratings never recovered. He’s remained underwater with Gen Z voters since March, and is fast approaching his lowest-ever approval rating among the country’s youngest voters.
And young voters are expressing similar displeasure with the Republican party more broadly, according to G. Elliott Morris. Nearly half of Gen Z voters Morris polled in July said they thought the Republican Party had moved too far right, while only 24 percent said the Democratic Party had moved too far left.
Since Trump announced his reelection campaign in November 2022, YouGov has only recorded his favorability as falling below -43 twice among the 18 to 29 age group.
The first drop occurred during his civil fraud trial in October 2023, and the second in March 2024, during the lead-up to his criminal hush money trial.
As a separate YouGov CBS News poll found this week, voters—especially those 18 to 29—are unhappy with Trump and his administration on nearly every major issue. A whopping 66 percent of Gen Z respondents said they thought he was “too tough” on immigration, while 71 percent said they disapproved of his handling of the economy.
Another major issue damaging Trump’s ratings is the scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and the “Epstein tapes.” According to a July 18 YouGov poll, 41 percent of Gen Z respondents believed Trump likely knew “a lot” about Epstein’s crimes before his 2019 arrest, while 42 percent said they believed Trump and Epstein were “close friends.”
That narrative was supported by the late Epstein himself, who told author Michael Wolff in 2017 that he was Trump’s “closest friend for 10 years.”
