But in many ways, that is where the ideological similarities end. Larson, a dual major in biology and Spanish at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, does not oppose the legalization of marriage equality. She views climate change as undeniable, believes “immigrants make our country richer,” and disagrees with her parents on the need for a border wall.
Larson is part of Generation Z, one of the most ethnically diverse and progressive age groups in U.S. history. People born after 1996 tend to espouse similar views to the age cohort just ahead of them, the Millennials, but they are far more open to social change than older generations have been, according to the findings of a new report by the Pew Research Center. The findings mark a shift that could substantially reshape the nation’s political and economic landscape.
According to the study — which was based on online surveys of 920 youths ages 13-17 and nearly 11,000 adults 18 or older — only 30 percent of Generation Z respondents said they approved of President Donald Trump’s performance; more than half believed humans were fueling climate change; and 70 percent said they wanted the government to do more to solve the nation’s problems. Those views roughly mirror attitudes held by Millennials, and together, the two age groups may add up to a powerful voting bloc at odds with Republican orthodoxy, political scientists say.
“This should be an alert to the Republican Party as they think about generational replacement,” said Elizabeth Bennion, a professor of political science at Indiana University South Bend.
Each succeeding generation of Americans tends to be more progressive than those that came before, Bennion noted, a trend that potentially poses a long-term threat to the Republican Party’s power.
“If there isn’t a will to change within the party,” she said, “it could become permanently in the minority moving forward.”
Democrats of all ages tend to align fairly closely on major social and political issues, but the report highlights a sharp generational divide among Republicans. For example, more than half of the youngest Republicans surveyed said that racial and ethnic diversity was good for American society, a view shared by fewer than 40 percent of their Millennial counterparts, 34 percent of Generation Xers and just 3 in 10 baby boomers.
Young Republicans are also more likely to approve of same-sex marriage and accept transgender people.
Michael Schaefer, 18, a politically conservative college freshman from Youngstown, Ohio, said he was in the sixth grade when some classmates came out as gay, and had a number of transgender students as friends in high school.
“For over half my life, I’ve been shown the other side of sexuality and gender,” he said. “I don’t care about their sex or gender; I just care about the individual.”
More than one-third of Generation Z respondents said they knew someone who preferred to be addressed using gender-neutral pronouns, the Pew study found, compared with 12 percent of baby boomers.
More than 68 million Americans belong to Generation Z, representing about 22 percent of the nation’s population, according to 2017 survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau — a share larger than the Millennials’ and second only to the baby boomers’.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Americans’ political and social views do not tend to drift to the right as they age, according to Kim Parker, who oversees research into social demographic trends at the Pew Research Center.
“The differences we see across age groups have more to do with the unique historical circumstances in which they come of age,” she said, noting that demographers have not seen a generational pattern of growing more conservative or more Republican over time.
Paulina Aceves, 18, a high school senior in Scottsdale, Arizona, embodies the complexities of her generation. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, she proudly identifies as a Christian and a Republican. But she does not support a border wall, nor does she believe the government should be less involved in American society.
“The right solution is definitely for the government to take a more active role,” she said.
The Republican Party has lost younger Americans like Travis Gaither, though, as it has moved farther to the right on issues like immigration, gun control and climate change.
Gaither, who grew up in Tennessee, described his parents as “typical southern white Republicans” who belong to two country clubs and are active in the Chamber of Commerce.
But Gaither, 20, was chairman of the High School Democrats of Tennessee during his senior year, a political transformation fueled by his liberal social views and cemented by his outrage over Trump’s hard-line policies.
The Pew study found that two-thirds of Gaither’s generation believe, as he does, that black people are treated less fairly than whites in the United States. He said his feelings on the subject were shaped by an early brush with racism in high school, where a black girl he knew was menaced by a white football player who threatened to lynch her. And then his views were solidified in the summer, he said, after a police officer in Nashville, Tennessee, killed an unarmed black man.
“I feel like I’ve moved toward the left, as the Republican Party has shifted toward the right,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.