Gen Z Consumers Also Vote

“Gradually and then suddenly,” the great American writer Ernest Hemingway once observed about the slippery path toward personal bankruptcy. The same may be said of political fortunes, as illustrated by U.S. President Donald Trump. Although companies have been largely silent during the president’s first year back in office, one survey after another shows that the public’s once-robust support for his presidency has crashed, particularly among the all-important Gen Z cohort of voters and consumers. The question is whether business leaders will get the message, too.

Chasing Gen Z: The voters

The president’s approval rating has slipped across the board, down from 48 percent in February of last year to 39 percent in new polling. His performance has been far worse among up-and-coming voters in the Gen Z age bracket, generally defined as those born between 1997 and 2012.

Trump won more Gen Z voters in 2024 than in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, indicating a strong shift in sentiment among a voting bloc that traditionally trends Democratic. But the honeymoon has come to an abrupt end.

While the president enjoyed +10 approval rating from Gen Z last February, the latest polls have him at -32, a stunning 42-point drop, CNN Chief Data Analyst Harry Enten said on air last week.

Chasing Gen Z: The consumers

Political analysts have advanced several theories about how Trump managed to draw Gen Z voters out of their Democratic-leaning age cohort in 2024, only to fall out favor the very next year. Marketing professionals can offer some clues of their own, as Gen Z consumers have emerged as a powerful but perplexing force in the U.S. and worldwide.

“Gen Z has become a riddle that many retailers can’t quite crack,” the U.S. branch of the global business advisory firm PwC reported last year. “Gen Z is digitally native, yet drawn back to physical stores. Fiercely brand-aware, yet ready to abandon brands for private labels. Cautious with money, yet quick to spend when the purchase carries emotional weight.”

The U.K. public relations firm Digital Voice came to similar conclusions about teens and 20-somethings on their side of the pond, adding: “Despite being the audience advertisers covet most, Gen Z is notoriously skeptical of advertising.”

In particular, Gen Z consumers value personal connections and authenticity over traditional marketing tactics like celebrity endorsement, says Jay Sinha, an associate professor of marketing at Temple University’s Fox School of Business in Philadelphia.

“They are a new consumer in the U.S. market and are very different from past generations,” Sinha said in a statement after his Gen Z study was published in the Journal of Brand Strategy last year. “The traditional ways to appeal to consumers, they are not as effective with this audience.”

Gen Z consumers are more likely to seek opportunities to engage with non-celebrity “micro-influencers” online, a preference that has not escaped the attention of leading household brands, Sinha found. Coca-Cola, Nike, Starbucks, Gillette, Sephora and Red Bull are among the brands he noted as collaborating with online micro-influencers.

Individual spending habits aside, collectively Gen Z will soon be the most powerful consumer demographic in the United States. “When they reach age 25, their mean and median spending per capita in the U.S will outpace prior generations,” notes the analytics firm World Data Lab.

The authenticity factor at work

Gen Z’s inclination toward authenticity also extends to the workplace. In a 2025 global survey from Deloitte, more than 85 percent of Gen Z said that “having a sense of purpose is essential” to satisfaction at work. Only 6 percent said they aspire to a senior management position, indicating a strong preference for meaning and well-being over money. “Gen Zs are more focused on work/life balance than climbing the corporate ladder,” Deloitte found.

In another Deloitte survey from 2024, over 40 percent of Gen Z workers said they’ve quit a job, or plan to change jobs, due to concerns about their employer’s impact on climate change or sustainability in general.

Against this backdrop, it’s little wonder that Gen Z has turned their back on the president to a greater extent than the general public. Simply put, in the 2024 election cycle, more Gen Z voters put their faith in an advertising campaign featuring a high-profile celebrity. They now seem disappointed with the result, and they are not likely to make the same mistake again.

It remains to be seen how the Gen Z re-focus on authenticity will impact the corporate response to U.S. federal policy over the coming months. With a few notable exceptions, in 2025 business leaders put their heads down and kept their criticism of President Trump behind closed doors.

But a head-in-the-sand approach is not likely to appeal to a rising consumer cohort that demands a higher level of truth and factuality from their favorite brands, and from their president.

Featured image: A.C./Unsplash