Youth Movement: The Next Generation of Conservatives

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.