Generation Z (or Gen Z for short), colloquially also known as zoomers, is the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials and preceding Generation Alpha. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1990s as starting birth years and the early 2010s as ending birth years.
Generation Z is generally alike to Millennials on political and social issues. Generation Z has been reported to be "progressive and pro-government", though this narrative has occasionally been challenged, particularly in Europe. The generation is largely in favor of LGBT rights, gender equality, and access to abortion. Economically, Generation Z has a more favorable outlook on socialism than previous generations. Gen Z varies largely by country on whether to make it easier for legal migrants to live and work in their home countries.
Movements associated with Generation Z so far include School Strike for Climate and March for Our Lives, though the generation's influence on such movements is disputed as only 10% of participants in the latter were 18 or under. In contrast with older generations who mainly receive news from television news, Generation Z receives their information primarily from social media.
Voting patterns
A consistent trend in much of the Western world since after World War II is that older people are more likely to vote than their younger countrymen, and they tend to vote for more right-leaning or conservative candidates. According to Sean Simpsons of Ipsos, people are more likely to vote when they have more at stake, such as children to raise, homes to maintain, and income taxes to pay. The generational gap of political positions could be due to the fact that today's youths grew up in different sociopolitical environments from their parents and grandparents that make them more likely to go to university, correlating with socially liberal views on certain issues. Millennials are also the first generation to own less than their predecessors at the same age, and with Gen Z exhibiting similar trends, economically redistributive policies tend to be popular with this generation.
However, in recent years, in tandem with more members of Generation Z being able to vote in elections, the youth vote has increased. Additionally, Generation Z challenges the left-ward trend in many countries, especially in Europe. GenZers are typically left sided and lean more towards socialistic support when it comes to political stance in America.
Europe
In the 2019 European Parliament election in France, the support of the far-right National Rally (formerly the National Front) among those 35 and under nearly halved as compared to the 2014 election, where the Front won the plurality of votes in that age group. It is important to note that (depending on how the generation is defined) the 2014 election either had one year or no years of Generation Z voters, while the 2019 election had four to six years. In the first round of the 2017 Presidential election, National Front candidate Marine Le Pen won more votes from people between the ages of 18 and 35 during than any other candidate. Moreover, the share of women aged 18 to 26 who backed the Le Pen political family rose from 9% in 1988 to 32% in 2017, closing the gender gap in the process.
In Austria, more than one in two men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for the nationalist Freedom Party in the 2016 presidential election, and 30% of those ages 18 to 29 voted for the Freedom Party in the 2017 parliamentary elections. However, in the 2019 European Parliament election, the Freedom Party came in third with the same age group (17%), behind both the Greens (28%) and the Social Democratic Party (22%).
In the 2019 European Parliament election in Germany, 30% of voters aged 18 to 30 voted for the Green Party, beating every other political party by wide margins in that particular age group.
In Italy, the populist party Five Star Movement won the youth vote overwhelmingly in the 2018 national election. But in the 2019 European Parliament election, the right-wing party Lega Nord won the largest vote-share among both millennials and Gen Z.
In the 2019 European Parliament election in Poland, the national-conservative Law and Justice party came first among those aged 18 to 29.