Trump’s Gen Z Breakthrough

Over the past few weeks, athletes across the country have embraced a new, viral victory dance: The Trump. The dance, an imitation of the shimmy President-elect Donald Trump frequently broke out at his famous rallies, has become a sensation, with everyone from NFL stars to UFC fighters marking their victories with an endearing nod to the 45th and 47th president.

The trend has also spread on social media as part of a weeks-long virtual celebration of Trump’s victory from an unlikely group: Gen Z.

Trump built an astonishingly broad coalition of voters to fuel his electoral victory. But one of the most crucial groups with which he made inroads – both for this contest and the future vitality of the Republican Party – was young voters.

While some states are still counting ballots, Trump clearly made significant gains among this generally liberal voting cohort. According to the nonprofit America 2100, Trump made gains with “every single Gen Z demographic – men and women, white and nonwhite.”

While Trump’s gains with young women were significant – he won 41 percent of women aged 18-29 compared to 33 percent in 2020 – his gains with young men were even more impressive. After 41 percent of men aged 18-29 voted for Trump in 2020, 56 percent voted for him this year, an astonishing 15-point swing.

Among voters aged 18-44, Trump also gained four points with white men, five points with white women, 15 points with nonwhite men, and nine points with nonwhite women. While women in particular were supposed to be a strength for Kamala Harris, she lost significant ground compared to Biden’s performance four years ago.

Policy issues clearly drove Trump’s gains. Voters were primarily concerned about inflation, immigration, and crime. On all three issues, Trump consistently outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in the polls.

But beyond hard policy, Trump’s larger-than-life persona, charisma, and innovative campaign strategies also undoubtedly played a major role in his breakthrough with young voters. On social media site TikTok, several of Trump’s speeches went viral as dance songs. His comments about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, “eating the cats” and “eating the dogs,” spawned a hit remix and viral dance that garnered millions of views. Similarly, the inflection he used to describe Harris attending a “dance party with Beyonce” spawned another viral dance mix.

Trump’s virality was also due in part to the unique and now iconic mementos from his campaigns – the famous red “Make America Great Again” hats.

When Trump unveiled the hats in 2016, the media derided them as gimmicky and silly. In October of that year, a Washington Post story revealed that “Donald Trump’s presidential campaign spent… $3.2 million on hats.” Pundits pointed to this as an example of the unserious nature of his candidacy. Only after Trump emerged victorious was it revealed that those hats earned the Trump campaign $80,000 per day on average.

The hats and the movement they represented had deep purchase with American voters. In that first election, many Trump supporters were hesitant to wear them publicly for fear of backlash from friends, family members, and employers. This year they have exploded into public view, with entire college fraternities hosting events at which the MAGA hat was required attire. Four days after the election, an X user posted a video of seven women in downtown Los Angeles wearing MAGA hats at brunch.

Trump’s campaign was also replete with incredible viral images that clearly resonated with young voters. Trump’s mugshot photo after his controversial New York case went viral with Democrats and Republicans for far different reasons. Liberals touted the image as “victory,” while Republicans used it as a rallying cry against relentless lawfare that was so egregious that a former federal prosecutor considered the case “the outer boundaries of the law and due process.”

Additionally, Trump’s day of work at a McDonalds drive-through was viewed millions of times on social media. The photo of the president waving out the window also garnered over half a million likes on X. His stint riding in a garbage truck similarly took on a life of its own as a popular social media meme.

Yet nothing proved more iconic than the photos from Butler, Pennsylvania, when a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear. The image of Trump, covered in blood, with the American flag at his back, raising his fist in defiance, will likely be remembered as one of the greatest political photos in history. As Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg put it, “Seeing Donald Trump rise up after being shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Trump’s emergence as the “cool” candidate in this year’s election was not supposed to happen. Democrats, thanks to their control of the media and Hollywood, typically have the benefit of those institutions portraying liberals as fresh and hip while portraying Republicans as stuffy and out of touch.

That was especially supposed to be the case with Kamala Harris, who supposedly represented a new generation of leadership that understood the needs of younger Americans. In the days after Harris became the nominee, her campaign employed catchphrases like “Kamala is brat,” “coconut army,” and “vibes” to manufacture hype around the vice president. While these efforts appeared to engage young voters early on, Harris’s rehearsed lines and empty slogans quickly became stale with voters young and old.

For the first time since the 1980s, young people are beginning to see Republicans as the party of hope, opportunity, and fun. The oppressive woke culture of the left, with its endless social justice purity tests, trigger warnings, and microaggressions drove millions of young people away from the Democrat Party. In Trump, they found a breath of fresh air and, more importantly, hope that the best years of this country are ahead of them, not behind them.

Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.