Meet ‘the loud majority.’ College conservatives are silent no longer.
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Caitlin Babcock Staff writer
| University Park, Pa.
“It is cool to be a conservative nowadays.”
That’s the message Brilyn Hollyhand, an 18-year-old Republican activist, had for a group of students gathered at Pennsylvania State University for a College Republicans conference.
Inside the student life center, speakers like Mr. Hollyhand – who is also a bestselling author and podcast host – encouraged attendees to share their political convictions in person and on social media. “The silent majority is no longer,” he told the group. “Thankfully, we’re the loud majority.”
Why We Wrote This
Some conservative student groups on university campuses report increased interest in their club activities. This comes at a time when pollsters are evaluating whether more members of Generation Z are shifting rightward in their political views.
Conservative activists, who have long viewed college campuses as progressive training grounds, are spreading a message that colleges, and the younger generation, aren’t just the domain of liberals anymore. In the run-up to last November’s election, right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk swept through campuses on his You’re Being Brainwashed Tour, attracting thousands of students at swing-state colleges. Polls showed President Donald Trump made significant gains at the ballot box with voters under 30 years old – particularly men.
Since the election, there’s been “momentum among young conservatives across the country,” says Jipson Zhang, the president of the Young Americans for Freedom chapter at George Washington University, in an email.
Mr. Zhang says his club has increased by 40 new members this semester, out of a student population of over 25,000, with club events drawing a wider turnout. A recent talk by conservative media figure Ben Shapiro sold more than 400 tickets in 10 minutes. The College Republicans club at Penn State has grown by about 15 people this year. Members were surprised to hear loud chants of “Trump, Trump!” for their homecoming parade float last fall.
Of course, liberal student activism is still dominant: College students were among those joining protests across the United States on April 5 against President Trump and Elon Musk. And the wave of student protests over the war in Gaza last spring brought many college campuses to a grinding halt. Mr. Trump has frozen or put under review federal funding for several elite universities, such as Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, that he accuses of ignoring antisemitism or ideological indoctrination.
But the rising interest in conservative politics on college campuses hints at unexpected dynamics among the wider Generation Z that emerged in the last presidential election, some analysts say.
Young people are “potentially the most conservative generation that we’ve experienced maybe in 50 to 60 years,” Democratic consultant David Shor told Ezra Klein of The New York Times last month. Mr. Shor points to the impact of the COVID pandemic and the dramatic increase in smartphone usage as potential factors for this political shift.
Conservatives on campus speak up
When Jasmyn Jordan enrolled at the University of Iowa three years ago as a freshman, she wasn’t focused on politics. But her interest was piqued when she got an email from the Young Americans for Freedom club inviting her to hear former Vice President Mike Pence speak on campus.
At the event, she was struck by the experience of being “in a room of over 500 people who shared similar beliefs to me.” Now a college senior, she’s also the president of the Young Americans for Freedom chapter, part of a nationwide organization promoting conservative values on university campuses. Last fall, her chapter saw the biggest growth she can recall in her four years as a student.
Politics can play a big role in college students’ experiences. Over a quarter of prospective students in 2023 said they ruled out a school because of the politics, policies, or legal situation in that college or university’s state. And according to a survey conducted by BestColleges, Republican college students are still far less likely than Democrats to say they’re comfortable expressing their opinions without fear of negative consequences.
That rings true in Ms. Jordan’s experience. Her participation in Young Americans for Freedom has prompted criticism from some of her peers. She says there’s “an unequal playing field for freedom of speech.” When her club hosted a conservative commentator in 2023, a protester poured thousands of marbles down stairwells in the building where he was speaking.
Her club often has discussions about current events, and members recently talked about education. She says they largely approved of Mr. Trump’s plans to downsize the Department of Education and agreed that the current education system incorporates too much bias.
“We’ve felt, especially after COVID, that teachers really are just focusing on pushing their political opinions in the classrooms,” she says.
Support from outside organizations
Students aren’t completely alone as they’re running these clubs. They benefit from the support of parent organizations like the Young America’s Foundation, which hosts conferences, helps students buy supplies for their events, and offers advice.
This is typical of how many conservative organizations operate on college campuses, says Amy Binder, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of “The Channels of Student Activism: How the Left and Right Are Winning (and Losing) in Campus Politics Today.”
She found that right-leaning organizations tend to tap into a broad network of outside institutions for support – a practice less common among progressive clubs.
“Students on the right don’t feel like they are in the swim of things on campus,” says Dr. Binder. “And so they look to outside organizations to create spaces for them.” In turn, these outside organizations frequently recruit conservative students for jobs and internships.
One of the most prominent of these organizations is Turning Point USA. Since the group’s establishment in 2012, its co-founder Mr. Kirk has become a well-known presence on campuses across the country, achieving online fame through his viral debates with left-leaning students. Last fall, his organization launched a tour that swept through over 20 campuses, giving special attention to swing states. On his podcast, Mr. Kirk estimated 2,000 people attended the first event at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Owen Anderson, the faculty adviser for Arizona State University’s Turning Point USA branch, credits Mr. Kirk’s efforts with the growing interest he’s seen in his college’s chapter.
“He really started kind of a grassroots movement,” says Dr. Anderson, a professor of philosophy and religious studies.
Young people shifting to the right
Conservative organizations are not solely responsible for the rise in right-wing student advocacy. Some polls show young people appear to be less progressive than previous generations. In the 2024 election, 75-year-old white men supported Kamala Harris at a significantly higher rate than 20-year-old white men, according to polling by Mr. Shor’s Blue Rose Research. The majority of white men and women under the age of 26, as well as the majority of men of color under 26, also supported Donald Trump, the March Blue Rose report showed.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that young people are identifying as “conservative,” says Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Research, a company that conducts exit polls. He believes part of what has drawn young voters to Mr. Trump is that the president’s message isn’t “neatly correlated” with traditional political labels.
“Part of Trump’s appeal is that he successfully muddles his policy positions in terms of what we consider traditional liberal, moderate, conservative breakouts,” says Mr. Lenski.
But there’s certainly been a shift – driven in part by minority voters. Polling from Edison Research shows that between 2020 and 2024, the most growth in support for Mr. Trump from 18-to-29-year olds came from Black and Hispanic voters.
There’s also a yawning political gap between young men and young women. Young men are significantly more conservative than their female counterparts – the gender gap for people under 25 is double that of voters between the ages of 40 and 70.
A lot of this may boil down to education. The most progressive young people are college-educated women. And for almost three decades, women have outpaced men in obtaining bachelor’s degrees. That gap is still widening, and men are more likely than women to say they don’t want a degree.
What’s driving the change
Many theories exist to explain young peoples’ support for Mr. Trump. There’s the media environment – on sites like TikTok, young people often have their personal views fed back to them by selective algorithms, which reinforces the “echo chamber” effect. COVID lockdowns in 2020 also had a significant impact on young people trying to finish school and form relationships in the working world, some of whom viewed Republicans as less stringent on lockdowns. And then there are economic concerns.
There’s a “sense among young people that the current system doesn’t really work for them,” says Mr. Lenski, who points to Gen Zers getting married later, having children later, and buying houses later.
Maximilian Pase, the treasurer of the Penn State College Republicans, attended the club’s leadership conference earlier this year. He says his support for Mr. Trump largely comes down to the economy. “Since I’m a kid in college, most of my expenses are in gas and food,” he says. He believes Mr. Trump will be able to lower prices.
Ryan Klein, the president of Penn State’s College Republicans chapter, is particularly proud of how his club mobilized last fall to support Republican candidates. He and other members knocked on doors, tailgated with Pennsylvania Sen. Dave McCormick, and helped bring Mr. Trump to speak on campus.
“We’re in the middle of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the perennial swing state for every election,” says Mr. Klein. “There’s a lot of room for college kids to not only make their voices heard, but to have an outsized role in the political process.”
