In the 2002 book “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” authors John Judis and Ruy Teixeira claimed that America’s rapid ethnic diversification would springboard the Democratic Party into consistent dominance. The country has indeed diversified, but the authors’ conclusion seems misguided, at best, and diametrically opposite to the truth, at worst.

Generally speaking, Democrats have long hoped for a coming liberal generation, an inevitable legion of new voters and activists who, raised by a multicultural, digital and moral society, would rearrange the locus of politics leftward. Online commentary has often blared a similar message on competence: out with the old and ignorant in D.C. and in with the young, honest, savvy and coherent. Bernie Sanders himself proclaimed Gen Z to be “a generation of tolerance and decency.”

However, former Vice President Kamala Harris’s youth support slipped 21% compared to former President Joe Biden’s, while support from those 65 and older climbed 3%, according to Tuft’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. And young politicians, in my opinion, have proven to be no more successful at statesmanship than their avuncular colleagues. Certainly, your Matt Gaetzs and Josh Hawleys are no less conservative than your Chuck Grassleys and Mitch McConnells — maybe more. Were people just outright wrong that Gen Z would supply Democrats with the ammunition they needed? Not necessarily. There are many young liberals, and there are many youth cultural spheres that are generally progressive. “Leftwing” media is abundant, and Gen Z has fielded many advocates for Democratic concerns.

In fact, the trend isn’t that Gen Z is homogeneously conservative but rather that it is intensely polarized. For every energetic liberal, there is also a conservative of the same kind. The “alt-right” and the “manosphere,” have epitomized this youth conservatism. I’ll go into the details later, but first I want to ask: why did people assume there would be a broad-based liberal generation?

The book tackles one idea in particular: a growing, multiracial coalition. This assumes that racial minorities would stay unflaggingly Democratic. I discussed the faults of this perspective in a previous article. To summarize, ethnic minorities tend to depolarize over time; that trend kicks into gear with new party systems that are more ideological and coalitions that are less racially distinguished.

The second reason is also slickly deceptive. People felt that young people radiated liberal enthusiasm because some did. Our social media algorithms don’t deliver impartial surveys of public opinion and experience. They regurgitate content that agrees, in substance and style, with our own. So, liberals only saw young liberals. A similar trend appears with the news we pick and choose. With every progressive protest that stocked streets, we assumed that it represented the broad will of a generation, forgetting all the young people who never showed up.

This media issue also helps reveal why this generation is so polarized. People hoped that the internet would democratize all information and level out divisions by being a free forum for engagement. Instead, it created media abundance, allowing people to associate themselves with the figures and perspectives they already believed in. Before the digital age, most people could only politically engage with those in their locality, meaning they had to witness a variety of opinions. Today, we have the comfort of avoiding them.

Similarly, our society is no longer tethered to powerful, homogenizing institutions like that of mainstream media. These deep-set social nodes brought, for better or worse, stability. Now, in the chaotic marketplace of ideas of online news, the brashest and loudest win out. Every news item is picked apart and rearranged to satisfy our desire to be right. It’s no wonder that, in contemporary politics, basic principles, such as respecting elections, have been overridden without much fanfare.

Importantly, this polarization is not evenly scattered but intersectionally sliced. The youngest demographics in the election had a particularly pronounced gender gap: according to Tufts, there was a 31% split between men and women voters from ages 18-29.

That reminds us that polarization is not simply political but implicitly cultural. I mentioned earlier the “manosphere,” a socio-political network of male influencers that promote traditional, conservative masculinity. But this is not simply a political unit; it holds ties to UFC, fitness, Joe Rogan and hustle culture.

Once again, the digital age has facilitated the growth of insular, idiosyncratic cultures like this and hidden them from the eyes of affluent liberals. Some Democrats now want to re-engage with such popular culture and political media. If they do, they need to consider the structures that are erasing notions of mass culture and universal ideals from Western society. Division along the lines of social groups appears to be the most salient characteristic of Gen Z politics.