The Trump campaign’s success in making inroads with young men in the 2024 presidential election upended much of the conventional wisdom about the U.S. youth vote.

While the validated voter files will give us a more precise picture of how young people voted later this spring, a post-election survey by my organization found that 58 percent of Gen Z men (that is, voters age 18 to 27), reported voting for Donald Trump. Not since the election of George H.W. Bush 36 years ago has a majority of young men voters backed a Republican for president.

But a closer look at data suggests that young male voters may have been more up for grabs than was assumed. Young men have gradually been abandoning the Democratic Party label for much of the last decade, according to Gallup data. But it has only been in the last year or so that the GOP brand has become more popular with Gen Z men.

Our survey of Gen Z Americans, conducted in late 2023, found that Gen Z men were more likely to identify as Democrats than Republicans (30 percent vs 24 percent, respectively), with a plurality of Gen Z men identifying as independent or something else. Findings from our 2024 post-election survey, however, show a striking reversal of this pattern, with Gen Z men now more likely to identify as Republican (38 percent) than Democratic (23 percent).

The same survey also shows an increase in conservative identity........

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