Trump Has Lost All Gains He Made With Young Voters—and Then Some

A collective 81 percent of Gen Z respondents said that they either somewhat or strongly disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Iran war, and 72 percent said that the U.S. should stop military operations in Iran altogether. Some 48 percent of polled young Americans said that inflation and the rising cost of living were the most important economic matters to themselves and their families at the moment, an 8 percent increase compared to August 2025.Meanwhile, roughly 80 percent of Gen Z respondents said that the U.S. is on the wrong track, the highest percentage of any age group polled, and nearly half (47 percent) of polled young adults said that they would choose to live in the past if they could. A minority of respondents appeared optimistic about the future: Just 10 percent said they’d choose to go less than 50 years into the future if the option was hypothetically available to them, and 5 percent said they would time-skip by more than 50 years. Those polled said that their feelings about the future were informed by their relationship with technology and a “growing discomfort with being connected to the internet at all times,” reported NBC News. The current technological and geopolitical uncertainty has inspired a nostalgia for a less chaotic, less technologically dependent world.The poll found that 62 percent of Gen Z respondents believed that life will be worse for them than for previous generations. Just 25 percent said that they thought that the quality of life would improve compared to the past, and 13 percent said it would remain the same.