OK Boomer: Neocons Used Landline Phones to Poll Young MAGA Voters
Yes, landlines — in a poll about Gen Z.
This article originally appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation and was republished with permission.
Guest post by Adriel Perez-Gonzalez
New polling suggests Gen Z may be adopting the warmongering, interventionist attitude of those who came before. But the study’s own underlying data tells a more complicated story than its topline conclusion.
The polling spurred a Washington Post column by Fox News contributor and American Enterprise Institute (AEI) resident fellow Marc Thiessen titled “How young MAGA voters view America’s role in the world.” In the article, Thiessen argued, “Young MAGA voters don’t want America to pull back from the world; they want to lead it,” and “From Ukraine to Iran to Taiwan, Trump supporters under 30 favor engagement over isolation.”
Thiessen’s bottom line was even more sweeping: “The isolationists are out of step with Trump and the ‘America First’ movement writ large — and there is no help on the way from the Gen Z right.”
But the study rests on much shakier ground than Thiessen suggests.
The research, conducted by the Ronald Reagan Institute, found that a majority of self-identified MAGA voters under 30 largely agree with an interventionist approach to American foreign policy. The polling used a mix of live-cellular and landline phones, along with an oversample of younger MAGA voters.
Yes, landlines — in a poll about Gen Z.
That methodological choice alone raises obvious questions about who, exactly, the pollsters reached — and whether the sample reflects the young, online, post-2024 conservative coalition the report claims to understand.
The study also relies on “self-identified MAGA voters” without clearly defining what that label means, how respondents understood it, or whether it captures the broader universe of young voters who helped power Republicans to victory in 2024.
“MAGA” itself has been observed to be a label largely adopted by older generations, not by young Americans. In addition, the sweeping GOP victories in 2024 were carried not on the shoulders of MAGA voters alone; instead, through effective messaging, Republicans assembled a coalition of libertarians, independents, “MAHA” loyalists, and everyday Americans who were not politically engaged and simply wanted lower prices, border security, and safer streets.
Further, while the study boasts about dismantling the narrative that young conservatives are more isolationist, it only interviewed 331 “MAGA Republicans under 30.”
A national GOP consultant, who requested anonymity to be able to speak freely about the survey’s methodology, said the sample of young MAGA voters is not large enough to derive meaningful national insights.
“This poll is an outlier from anything I’ve seen in the last 18 months,” the consultant told the Daily Caller.
The research stands in stark contrast to other polling conducted on this age group regarding foreign policy. A Pew Research poll from April of this year found that 57% of Republicans between the ages of 18 and 49 hold unfavorable views of Israel, in stark contrast to the Reagan Institute poll, which found that 63% of MAGA voters under 30 agreed with the notion that the security of Israel matters to the United States’ security and prosperity.
“A New York Times poll, which is one of the best in the industry, found that among Republicans, those 18 to 44, who are Gen Z and Millennials, found overwhelming disapproval for the war in Iran, and generally want the party’s future on foreign policy to change. The young Republicans want a change. That is why they voted for Trump in the first place.” Ryan Girdusky, a conservative political consultant, told the Caller in response to the Reagan Institute findings.
Questionable methodology aside, Thiessen’s Washington Post column and the Reagan Institute’s survey press release conveniently excluded data points from the survey that did not support their message of an up-and-coming group of interventionist conservatives.
The study asked respondents whether they agreed with the sentiment, “The U.S. is better served by withdrawing from international affairs and focusing more attention on problems here at home.” Seventy-two percent of “MAGA” respondents under 30 agreed with the statement, compared to 64 percent of all MAGA voters.
MAGA respondents under 30 were also 17 points less likely than overall MAGA respondents to say that Israel’s security matters to U.S. security and prosperity — 63 percent compared to 80 percent — and 14 points less likely to say that Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon matters to U.S. security and prosperity — 75 percent compared to 89 percent.
Overall, voters under 30 were the least likely group to care about Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, U.S. involvement in NATO, or total regime change in Iran, and were the most likely group to support a negotiated settlement with Iran.
Likewise, a much smaller majority of MAGA respondents under 30 agreed that U.S. involvement in international affairs is mostly beneficial. Sixty-two percent of MAGA respondents under 30 said U.S. involvement is mostly beneficial, compared to 81 percent of all MAGA respondents who said the same.
MAGA respondents under 30 were also 13 points less likely to support sending weapons to Israel — 60 percent compared to 73 percent of overall MAGA voters.
Taken together, the numbers tell a different story than the one highlighted by Thiessen and the Reagan Institute. Even within a poll framed around self-identified MAGA voters — and conducted using a methodology that raises serious questions about its ability to reach young conservatives — respondents under 30 were consistently less hawkish than MAGA voters overall.
That does not prove young conservatives are monolithic isolationists. But it does undercut the claim that Gen Z MAGA voters are rushing to inherit the neoconservative foreign policy consensus.
There is, of course, a wide variety of thought among Republicans. But asserting that young MAGA voters are blindly echoing the sentiments of neocons past is unsupported by the survey’s own data.
“This study, like other neocon-led ventures, can insist that all we have to do to win the future is just dig up the body of Ronald Reagan … We’ve had a policy of fight the world and bite the world that has been detrimental to the future generations of Americans, and they know it,” Girdusky told the Caller.
The Caller reached out to Thiessen to discuss his column but did not receive a response.
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