If you'd paid attention to MAGA media in the months leading up to the 2024 election, the surprise wasn't that young voters swung hard toward President Trump.

• The surprise was that so many people missed it.

Why it matters: Gen Z's digital world became a powerful political incubator for the Republican Party in 2024 — a force for persuasion and community building that reshaped the youth vote in astonishing ways.

• Seemingly overnight, MAGA took command of a full-fledged social ecosystem that met many young Americans where they already were.
• It was a cultural and political revolution hiding in plain sight — yet it blindsided the Democratic establishment, which is now scrambling to understand how it happened, and how to fight back.

👀 Zoom in: Axios reporters Erica Pandey and Tal Axelrod set out to experience the MAGA-verse online — in real time.

• We each created new accounts on TikTok — where Gen Z disproportionately gets its news — and followed a basic set of MAGA or MAGA-aligned accounts: think Team Trump, Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens.
• TikTok knew that Tal was a 30-year-old man and Erica was a 30-year-old woman. From there, the algorithm took control.

At first, we got what we expected: clips from Trump rallies, viral moments from Kirk's podcasts and segments from Fox News. Then our experiences diverged.

• Tal was fed a steady stream of masculinity content: endurance athlete David Goggins berating men with motivational speeches, podcaster Chris Williamson interviewing guests about male struggles.
• Erica's "For You" page zeroed in on three topics: 1) right-wing critiques of modern feminism pulling women away from marriage and motherhood; 2) debates around trans women in sports; and 3) the ethics of abortion.

🔎 The intrigue: It took less than an hour for the algorithm to move us from standard MAGA content to deeper ideological terrain — podcast clips, campus debates and "red pill" rants about gender roles and identity.

• We didn't go looking for this content — it came to us. And it revealed a striking pattern: Right-wing views on gender and identity are digitally intertwined with MAGA politics.

Dip your toe in, and the algorithm grabs your ankle:

• Interested in mixed martial arts and the UFC? You might land on a pro-Trump hype reel.
• Interested in lifestyle content? You might end up with conservative takes on motherhood and marriage.

Between the lines: Much of the gender-based content we observed wasn't overtly political or fringe — at least not at first.

• "A lot of this gets glamorized on social media," says Rachel Janfaza, a youth political analyst and writer of The Up and Up, a newsletter about Gen Z.
• "You see influencers talking about how amazing it is to be a stay-at-home girlfriend or stay-at-home mom and cook and clean."

📈 "Trad wife" and "manosphere" videos perform extraordinarily well.

• "It's kind of this vicious cycle where these social media algorithms are naturally going to be favorable towards content that is a little bit more inflammatory and click-worthy," said Ali Mortell, the director of research at Democratic data firm Blue Rose Research.
• "And then on top of that, the political right, not just in the United States, but globally, has really leaned into that shift in the earned media environment in a way" that the left has not, Mortell added.

The bottom line: If you're not on social media, this world may seem distant — but it's central to Trump's strength with Gen Z, and a key part of why he's sitting in the White House.

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The latest Yale Youth Poll found an 18-point partisan gap between younger and older members of Generation Z.

• Voters aged 22–29 said they would favor Democratic candidates in the 2026 midterms by a margin of 6.4 points, while those aged 18–21 favored Republicans by a margin of 11.7 points.

Why it matters: America's youngest voting cohort may be better understood as two distinct subgenerations — divided, in large part, by how they experienced the shock of COVID-19.

🎯 Zoom in: Youth political analyst Rachel Janfaza breaks down "Gen Z 1.0" and "Gen Z 2.0" based on how old they were during pandemic lockdowns and the rise of TikTok.

• Gen Z 1.0 graduated from high school before COVID. They quarantined in college dorms or apartments with friends and came of age during President Trump's first term — shaped by the Women's March, gun control rallies and the Black Lives Matter movement.
• Gen Z 2.0 was in high school or middle school during lockdowns, isolating at home with family and cut off from peers. The backlash to COVID-era policies pushed many younger voters right. And because they entered adulthood under President Biden, "counter-culture" often meant aligning with MAGA, Janfaza says.

Between the lines: Older Gen Zers came of age on platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Younger Gen Zers are native to TikTok.

• 9% of young adults said they got their news from TikTok in 2020, according to Pew Research. By 2024, that figure had surged to 39%.
• Trump's campaign seized on that shift early, reaching young voters on TikTok months before Biden or then-Vice President Harris.

🔭 Zoom out: As a whole, Americans under 30 still lean Democratic. But the partisan split within Gen Z came into sharp focus during the 2024 election.

• White men under 20 voted for Trump at higher rates than their late-20s counterparts — and even more than white baby boomer men, according to research from Democratic polling group Blue Rose Research.

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Zohran Mamdani, the victorious young progressive in New York City's mayoral primary, is showing what it looks like when a Democrat taps into the energy, language and anxieties of Gen Z.

• Why it matters: As national Democrats pour millions into polling and research to win back young voters, Mamdani has offered a successful, real-time playbook for how to actually reach them.

👀 The party establishment remains deeply skeptical of the 33-year-old state assembly member, a proud democratic socialist who defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in Tuesday's crowded primary.

• But Mamdani's digitally native, culturally fluent campaign undoubtedly resonated with Gen Z: A recent poll suggested he could win 60% of first-choice votes among 18- to 34-year-olds.

What's happening: Mamdani is running on a left-wing populist agenda — rent freezes, city-run grocery stores, free public transit — with a campaign strategy built for TikTok, not television.

• His videos are fast, emotional and unmistakably Gen Z: They don't explain policy so much as channel frustration with a system that so many young people feel is rigged.
• They can also be funny. Mamdani has mocked his scandal-ridden opponents, Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams, with the kind of dry, internet-savvy humor that travels fast on TikTok.

Reality check: New York is not the rest of the country.

• Mamdani is running in one of the most progressive cities in America, and there's little evidence he has crossover appeal with the kinds of Gen Z men who swung to Trump in 2024.
• "Red pill" culture and social conservatism, which helped power some of Trump's gains among young men, aren't necessarily receptive to Mamdani's brand of democratic socialism.

💡 The big picture: Still, Mamdani's campaign offers a rare glimpse of what it might look like if Democrats tried to compete for Gen Z's attention on cultural terrain — not just political ground.

• His model challenges the party to rethink how it communicates in an era where identity, aesthetics and authenticity often matter more than ideology.

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What the left didn't get — and the right seized upon — is how huge swaths of young men in America feel depressed, directionless and hungry for clarity on how they can find happiness.

• The big picture: Amid the chaos, many young men are courted by the right and feel alienated by the left.

Republicans' message was, "'We like men, and we like the things men like,' whether that's UFC or whatever. And sometimes in politics, making people feel like you like them is kind of important," says Richard Reeves of the American Institute for Boys and Men.

• "Democrats didn't do any of those things. ... In fact, sometimes there's even tendencies to say, 'We don't like the things you like, and we're not sure we like you.'"

🎓 Case in point: Aidan Thompson, a 21-year-old undergraduate at Kansas, says he feels Democrats' message is that "the things that make men who they are, are inherently evil."

• But Trump "seems like he's a billionaire that's just an American, like, he goes to UFC, he eats McDonald's, he watches wrestling and NASCAR, he knows tons of stuff about baseball," Thompson said.

"He gets shot, and he immediately gets up and he holds up his fist like 'you can't kill me.' That's just so freaking awesome."

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Men dominate the conservative youth movement, but more young women are building big followings.

• By the numbers: 41% of 18- to 29-year-old women voted for President Trump in 2024, compared with 33% in 2020, per data from Tufts' Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

🖼️ The big picture: Many young men and women share similar frustrations with the Democratic Party — including gripes with political correctness and a sense that the left looks down on traditional gender roles.

• "The left has become the party of hall monitors, telling me no and giving me lectures," says Raquel Debono, an influencer and founder of Make America Hot Again, a community of young conservatives in New York City.
• "There are a lot more conservative men than women. But people have neglected to mention that we've seen the counterculture rise from the feminist wave," she says. "Women want to feel like women again."

🔎 Zoom in: This month, Turning Point USA's Young Women's Leadership Summit brought together thousands of conservative women in their teens and 20s.

• A common theme among speakers and attendees was that women should forgo higher education and focus on becoming homemakers and mothers, The Cut's E.J. Dickson reports.

"Feminism told women to chase their corporate dreams for their validation while their kids were eating seed oils and their marriages were collapsing," Alex Clark, a conservative influencer and one of the speakers at the event, said on stage. "Well, we're done pretending that a cubicle is more empowering than a countertop."

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We want to keep the conversation going.

• What are you seeing in your social media feeds — on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook?
• What do you think of this deep dive, and what topic should we investigate next?

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