Gen Z Is Getting More Conservative. Here’s Why Brands Should Care

Sign up for our newsletter: “From A to Gen Z.” This biweekly email will put the biggest headlines about Gen Alpha, Gen Z and millennials into context to help readers better understand these key generations. 

Welcome to Morning Consult’s From A to Gen Z newsletter. We put the headlines you’re reading about Gen Alpha, Gen Z and millennials into context with our high-frequency survey data to help you better understand exactly how and why they’re spending their time — and their dollars. 

Our latest Gen Z report is out now, and it’s a particularly interesting one. My colleagues Eli Yokley, Cameron Easley and I leveraged the full extent of Morning Consult’s historical tracking data to provide a comprehensive picture of how and why the young cohort’s political beliefs and consumption behaviors have changed over the last decade. 

Today, we’re diving into these shifts and examining their implications for the private sector.

➡️➡️ Gen Zers have driven America’s recent rightward swing ➡️➡️

Since 2016, Gen Zers have gotten notably less liberal and notably more conservative across nearly all key demographics, including race, income and educational attainment. And while the general population is now 5 percentage points less likely to identify as liberal as they were in 2016, the drop among Gen Z is more than double that (-12 percentage points).

This rightward shift has been most pronounced among young men and nonwhites, who helped propel Trump to victory last November. To that end, our analysis also identified gender as the defining fault line within the cohort. Relative to all U.S. adults, Gen Z men and women are uniquely divided on things like the merits of the #MeToo movement, the importance of shared values with romantic partners and whether or not traditional gender roles should be preserved. 

Brands should be mindful of these differences when messaging around anything directly or tangentially related to them, like dating or relationships. 

▶️ Check out our report on Gen Z’s shifting politics in its entirety here.  

🔵🔴 Are there “blue” and “red” Gen Z consumer behaviors? 🔵🔴

As part of our research, we wanted to explore the above question. The answer? Yes — but only when these behaviors are traditionally tied to a specific gender.

For example, our Intelligence data shows that young conservatives skew male. We also know that sports fandom skews male. So, it’s unsurprising that conservative Gen Zers are several points more likely than their liberal counterparts (who skew female) to say that they do things like exercise daily, regularly attend sporting events and bet on sports.

The influence of gender weakens when it comes to bigger-tent consumer activities like online shopping, traveling and hosting get-togethers. Roughly equal shares of both groups report participating in these behaviors at the same frequency.

▶️ To learn more about the data that powers this research, reach out to your Morning Consult contact or email [email protected]. 

💪💰Conservative Gen Zers are especially confident consumers 💪💰

Relative to their liberal counterparts, conservative-identifying Gen Zers heavily over-index on several sentiments related to self-image and satisfaction, including feeling in control of their future, being hard-working and being content with their appearance. Maintaining a sense of order is also very important to this group. 

And though these gaps exist between conservatives and liberals of all ages, they are consistently more pronounced among the Gen Z set, suggesting young conservatives are uniquely motivated by self-optimization. Conservative Gen Zers are also much more likely than liberal Gen Zers to feel good about the state of their finances and the economy at large.

With this confidence — and a renewed sense of cultural clout under Trump 2.0 — right-leaning young people will likely be the source of major spending and consumer trends in the coming months and years, especially in categories that speak directly to their fixation with personal maintenance, like beauty and health and wellness.

▶️ Check out our full archive of Gen Z research and analysis.

What Else We’re Reading

• Why ‘Success Is Quieter’ for Younger Americans (The Wall Street Journal) 
• Passive Scrolling, Instead of Posting, Is the Norm On Social Media Now (Morning Consult)
• Against the odds, Gen Z is breaking into the housing market (CNN)

Upcoming

July 7 — Memo: Why Brands Should Bet on Substack. This analysis explores how brands stand to benefit from having a presence on newsletter platform Substack as more and more Americans interact with content in their email inbox. Once it’s published, you’ll be able to find it here. 

July 8 — Memo: What to Expect for the 2025 Holiday Shopping Season. We’re offering an early look at the spending and consumer trends expected to define this year’s holiday season. You can check it out on the MC Pro homepage when it goes live.