High school senior boys nearly twice as likely to be conservative as liberal: Survey

A University of Michigan survey found that boys in their senior year of high school are almost two times more likely to identify as conservative than as liberal. However, for twelfth-grade girls, they are even more likely to consider themselves liberal than conservative.

On the Monitoring the Future survey, which is considered a scholarly endeavor that dates back to the 1970s, according to The Hill, political differences that were once somewhat close have drifted farther apart.

For high school senior boys, the shares of conservative versus liberal were nearly identical between 2014 and 2016, around 19% for both factions. By 2022, that number had shifted to 23% for conservative, which was actually down three points from 2020.

Since that 2016 marker, boys identifying as liberal in grade twelve have plummeted to 13%.

The 2020-2023 numbers are the highest they've been for conservatives since the early 1990s, although the figures have nearly always hovered around the 20% mark, save for 1998-2002.

Liberal-identifying boys have been an ever-falling trend, however, since the study's first numbers in 1975 were at 25%.

Young girls are a different story, though; liberalism in senior girls has skyrocketed to over 30% in recent years, whereas conservative-identifying girls have dropped to nearly a third in comparison at 12%.

Similar trends appeared in the work of Jean Twenge, an author and professor of psychology at San Diego State University.

In her book "Generations," she presented a much more defined contrast between the sexes. According to her chart, which was posted to Reddit, the figures are around 65% for boys identifying as conservative and around 31% for girls.

“If you grew up playing video games that were not age-appropriate, and you were sitting in the [virtual] lobby, screaming at the mic, Trump was your president,” said Ethan, a 21-year-old George Washington University student told The Hill. “He really channeled that energy.”

Another young man named Tyler, a student at American University, told the outlet that going to post-secondary school actually caused him to be more liberal despite being conservative in high school.

“What changed me was, I go to the most liberal university,” he laughed. “Had I known that, I probably wouldn’t have gone.”

Tyler also noted that he doesn't much care for the word "liberal" because conservatives have equated liberalism with weakness. He said that he suspected other young men felt the same.

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