The surprising reason young Trump voters feel betrayed

President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference following a U.S. strike on Venezuela Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., January 3, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Donald Trump continues to bleed support from the young voters who made an unexpected swing for him in 2024, and according to a new report from Vox, there is a surprising reason driving the trend: they do not want to fight his wars.

Much has been made about Gen Z support for Trump and what drove it. Many surveys and focus groups have concluded that these young voters, like the rest of the American electorate, were primarily driven by economic concerns. This issue is generally viewed as more pressing for young people, who have considerably less income to work with than their older counterparts.

Writing for Vox in a piece published Tuesday, Rachel Janfaza — founder of The Up and Up, a research firm dedicated to Gen Z — noted that while economic factors remained the biggest factor in young voters' regret over supporting Trump, they also consistently shared another, less-reported reason they felt betrayed by the president's second term.

"In my work as a researcher, this is something I heard in focus groups and on campus quads at the time," Janfaza wrote. "Yes, economic issues mattered the most, but a surprising number volunteered that they were worried about the US being dragged into conflicts — and what it would mean for the generation that would be tasked with fighting them."

One young voter she spoke to, referred to as simply "Nicholas, an 18-year-old from Arizona," told her why he was swayed by Trump's messaging in 2024.

“I think Trump ran a good campaign to young people on stopping war,” he said. “That was one of the main kind of slogans, that he went off of as being pro-peace.”

Despite campaigning on a promise to end conflicts and keep the U.S. out of foreign wars, Trump has, especially in recent weeks, increasingly done the opposite. At the start of the year, the U.S. military carried out a strike in Venezuela to capture its president, Nicolás Maduro, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently refusing to rule out further military use in the South American country. Trump also refused to rule out military action during his recent campaign to acquire Greenland from Denmark, threatening to go to war with key NATO allies in Europe.

Another young Trump voter, "George, a 19-year-old Republican from New York," expressed concern that Trump was threatening to escalate foreign conflicts that are not worth it.

"It feels like it’s very ‘make it up as you go,’” he told Janfaza. “And then when it comes to Greenland, I feel like it’s sort of, ‘What are we doing here?’ It’s not being the good guys on the world stage. And why are you trying to mess things up?”

Female Trump voters expressed similar sentiments, with "Corinne, a 22-year-old from Ohio," speaking bluntly about her dissatisfaction.

“The ‘no new wars’ thing is now the biggest joke of my life,” she said. “It would be one thing if I felt like we were getting involved in something that mattered…but we’re inserting ourselves in conflict that we have no real reason to right now.”

From Your Site Articles