S6 Ep23: Young Trump Voters Have Feelings (with Rachel Janfaza)
The Focus Group Podcast
The Bulwark
4.8 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why are Gen Z men drifting right while Gen Z women move left? And why do right-wing zoomers think the gender gap is so wide? Sarah Longwell talks with the newest Bulwark contributor Rachel Janfaza, founder of The Up and Up, to analyze new focus groups of Gen Z Trump voters. They also get into these voters' Trump fatigue on foreign policy, why a future JD Vance presidential run isn't appealing, and whether these voters could ever date someone across the political divide.
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Show notes:
Rachel in Vox: The quiet reason why Trump is losing Gen Z
From November 2025: Rachel Janfaza on The Focus Group Podcast
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the |
| 0:12.0 | bulwark, and this week we're checking back in with Gen Z, specifically the right-hand side |
| 0:18.3 | of Gen Z. And when I asked my producer what he meant by right-hand side, |
| 0:21.8 | he was like, you know what I mean. I was like, I guess. But right-hand side sounds weird, but sure, |
| 0:25.8 | we're talking to Trump voting Gen Zers. A couple weeks ago, you may remember Will Summer and I talked |
| 0:30.7 | about a group of male Gen Z Trump voters. We talked a lot about their politics, but today we're |
| 0:35.8 | going to get into everyone's personal business and more on the future of the right, which is something I'm quite interested in. |
| 0:42.8 | We also recently talked to a group of Gen Z women who voted for Trump in 2024. |
| 0:48.6 | The conventional wisdom and the data hold that young men are getting more conservative and young women are getting |
| 0:54.9 | more progressive. So the Trump voting women are kind of an interesting woman bites dog story. |
| 1:01.2 | This is also my producer's joke that I laughed at really hard when I read it the first time. |
| 1:06.4 | My guest today is a repeat guest and also very exciting, a new bulwark contributor. She is going to be here |
| 1:14.6 | doing focus groups. Stop with me on Gen Z. Rachel Janfaza. What is up? Welcome to the team. |
| 1:21.0 | Thank you, Sarah. I'm so excited. You know, it's going to be nice to have another focus groupie |
| 1:25.8 | around here. Somebody else who talks to people. |
| 1:28.8 | And, you know, because I am old now, I need somebody to walk me through Gen Z. Because you guys make no sense to me. |
| 1:36.4 | Get off my lawn. Well, I'm happy to be here. I'm excited to talk to more voters with you, especially young ones, and make sense of all of it. |
| 1:45.5 | Yeah, if you guys miss my last show with Rachel, you should go check it out because she was so |
| 1:51.4 | smart and so good that I was like, yo, you should come do this with me. Also, she writes a great |
| 1:56.2 | substack newsletter called The Up and Up, and it's all just very smart, very good. And she has the same |
| 2:02.1 | psychotic impulse that I do, which is I just want to listen to people all the time because |
| 2:06.6 | that is cheat code for politics. And so I'm super pumped to have you here. Well, thank you. And I've |
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