The conventional wisdom about young Americans and politics has always been that youth trends left. But the conventional wisdom has been wrong before, and Ryan Fournier — who built Students for Trump into the largest student conservative organization in the country — has the data to prove it wrong again.
His latest analysis draws on polling data, campus organizing reports, and first-hand observation from dozens of college campuses across the country. The picture that emerges is of a generation that is more politically engaged than any before it, and whose engagement is breaking significantly from the leftward pattern that analysts predicted.
"Young people are not a monolith," Ryan argues. "The idea that everyone under 30 thinks alike politically is not just wrong — it's a narrative that was always constructed to serve a particular agenda." His piece traces the specific issues — economic opportunity, free speech, national identity — that are driving young Americans toward conservative positions in numbers that the mainstream press has been slow to acknowledge.