By the way, we saw something similar happen in 2016, albeit not to the same degree. 

The reason why these things fluctuate is because 

The share of under-30s voting Trump was up from 2016 too, by 5 points:

https://nypost.com/2024/11/06/us-news/kamala-badly-fumbles-gen-z-vote-which-broke-big-for-trump/

But yeah for the most part I agree, a large portion of young men have grown up in an environment where it can feel like left side of the political spectrum is hostile towards them, which makes the right feel welcoming by comparison.

Let's say a young white dude votes for the first time this year. For much of his life, he's seen the left constantly carrying on about how men are garbage, masculinity is toxic, white people are evil, and straight white men especially are the devil incarnate. All that adds up. Then someone like Trump or Tate comes along and says hey, you're actually great, follow me and I'll make your life better.

It's not hard to see how so many end up leaning right.

I'm absolutely Gobsmacked... Holy shit. Trump Derangment syndrome is back and it's on crack and conspiracy theories. I feel so bad for these people, obviously Boogie and the dude after isn't real. 

Arizona is a bit of a different beast. Despite being over twice the size of Georgia, it only has 15 counties where Georgia has 158 counties. Maricopa County is 60 percent of the population (it's more populated than 24 states as well) and varies as wildly in its composition as some states do. Phoenix, Tempe, and Guadalupe are very liberal. Much of the rest of the county is conservative. Scottsdale is wealthy Republicans, Mesa has a large Mormon population, and Glendale is anchored by Luke AFB, so they're more conservative than Phoenix or Tempe.  So Maricopa County's votes will depend on where they are still outstanding.  Unfortunately, none of the pollsters break Maricopa County down according to municipality, so it's a wild card.

Pima County, home of Tucson, is solidly blue. Coconino County (Flagstaff/Sedona) is also blue, but they have almost finished counting and it isn't nearly as huge a pocket of votes as Maricopa or Pima. 

On the Republican side, there is still a sizable pocket of uncounted votes in Yavapai County, which is solidly red (Trump did a lot of rallies in Prescott). Smaller amounts remaining in the rest of the state, but hopefully Yavapai plus these small counties won't offset Gallego's gains in Pima and Maricopa - providing that the outstanding votes in the latter are centered more in Phoenix-Tempe. 

That would be a faustian bargain to where we would have to pay in various ways and it would not be beneficial in the long run.  It's better to keep your nose clean and transact without underhanded dealings.  

We don't exactly have a great record when it comes to Middle Eastern oil. And to be honest, the Gulf oil industry in Texas and Louisiana isn't exactly known for being ethical in its dealings with the American people. 

A 5 point shift is probably statistically significant, but not so much that I'd consider it evidence that "Gen-Z is more conservative" or not necessarily "more progressive" than previous generations. This is especially the case given that many people seemed to have voted Trump not out of ideological alignment this round, but because of more global effects and the real politics surrounding them. He did win the popular vote this time and didn't in 2016, after all. 

I don't think young white people are voting slightly more conservatively in this round because of "woke politics". Especially when a lot of that has been purged from schools by the right over the last decade. To the point where not even the history of chattel slavery in North America is often taught. 

When I was talking about social alienation, I was talking more generally than the left-right spectrum. People are more atomized and socially alienated now than in the 20th century and even the first decade of the 21st century. This makes building meaningful trust-based connections harder and to maintain them even more-so. This then leaves one susceptible to radicalization. In 2004 if you started talking about "white replacement" you'd likely be talking about it in real life and get meaningful push-back by friends and family and other social connections, nipping the radicalization in the bud. In 2024 though, you would likely be on Twitter (hell the owner himself (re)tweets about it), 4-Chan, or Reddit, and with those quasi-anonymous relationships developing that ideology to the point where when you do talk about it in real-life you're already invested as a true-believer and it is much harder for your looser social connections to talk you out of it. 

And I am not talking about the right-leaners anyway. Young, white male Americans, always leaned right and likely always will for material reasons. Being a right-leaning liberal conservative or right-wing libertarian isn't a problem. 

The real question is why white men are moving to nationalist, traditionalist politics (which certainly aren't "lean right"), and why non-white men are also shifting a bit more right-wing. Social atomization and alienation in society is almost certainly the primary factor that has them funnel through "mano-sphere" and nationalist circles. 

You are describing an idiot who has yet to grow up, because the left you are talking about isn't representative of the left to begin with. When a young guy spends all his time on the internet and stumbles into the bubble of far-left activists and their garbage, then I can see why he would think that way. But even then, he should be smart enough to bother to listen what politicians on the left say and do, that way he would realize that the far-left is a small movement on the fringe that merely seems to be much bigger than it really is because of how obnoxious they are by screaming on the internet.

When you look at the population on the whole, you won't find more than 1% being on the woke train - which is what fits the description you laid out in your second to last paragraph. On the other extreme you have 10-15% of the population who are convinced that they are fighting a culture war and must push back against the wokeness. Meanwhile, everyone who remains is more concerned about actual problems.

There's a reason why study after study finds that people reducing their time on the internet reduces depression and leads to increased happiness. Social media is a plague because it's not properly moderated. What happens to such a place is that the good people leave, so the worst of humanity gets to dominate the platform, be it far-left or far-right bullshit. The problem is that you can't isolate any members of these factions and make them see the light, because only they themselves can make that choice. For that reason, I consider it pointless to cater to such people, because the time is better spent on the majority inbetween who is at least willing to listen to what you have to offer.

Although the problem there is that American campaigns make people numb due to the extremely long duration, so it's difficult to pick out the little pieces of actual information in the avalanche of blown out of proportion filler. So I am not surprised that most Americans don't understand how inflation and tariffs work, because broadcasts that deal with these topics specifically get lost in the shuffle all too easily. It's this ignorance that seemed to have mattered most in this election.

Yeah I did not mean to imply that Gen Z wasn't more progressive overall, just that there's been this expectation that all or at least the vast majority of young people will be more progressive than their elders, and as we can see that's not necessarily true; being young doesn't make you immune to the allure of right wing politics, and the difficult economic and social conditions Gen Z (and Alpha) have grown up in makes them especially susceptible to those who can seem to promise them a better life.

I think more broadly we are seeing a backlash to the hard left "woke" politics of the last decade or so, where so called anti-wokeness is becoming a movement in its own right and a lot of the more ridiculous and nasty excesses of the activist left in recent years have generated a lot of resentment that people like Trump are capitalizing on.

And yeah, social media and the way it separates us into echo chambers is a huge factor too. Our reality has become constructed by the media we consume, to the point where liberals and conservatives basically live in entirely different realities and can't reconcile their differences because any disagreement with one's views is seen as an attack on one's very reality.

When you do eat your pants, put a video of it on YouTube.