A new NBC News poll of Generation Z voters found stark differences along partisan and gender lines in how respondents ranked having children as part of personal success, with Trump supporters substantially more likely than Harris supporters to place child-rearing at the top of their list.
Among the groups NBC separated by gender and 2024 voting history, 34% of male Trump voters said having children was the most important item on a list of scenarios defining personal success, while just 6% of female Harris voters ranked it as most important. Female Trump voters placed having children in the middle of the list at 26%, and 9% of male Harris voters said it was most important.
The poll focused on voters aged 18 to 28, a subset of Generation Z, which is generally defined as those born between 1997 and 2012. NBC split respondents into four categories for analysis: male Trump voters, female Trump voters, male Harris voters and female Harris voters. The network did not provide detailed methodology or sample-size figures in the material reviewed for this story.
The results were widely shared on social media and drew public commentary from conservative figures. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk characterized the findings bluntly on social media, saying, "Democrat women want to die alone without children." Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah questioned who had "convinced" progressive women "to think this way." An X user writing under the handle @radish8r2 described the poll results as evidence of an "extinction event" for Democrats; another user, @ItsCaspius, suggested changing attitudes about marriage and childbearing spanned political lines.
Political analysts and pollsters have increasingly pointed to generational and gender splits within younger voters. The NBC findings follow other national surveys that depict deep partisan differences in outlook: a Gallup poll released this year found 0% of Democrats said the United States was headed in the right direction, while 76% of Republicans gave a positive response, a gap Gallup said was the largest it had recorded. Gallup also reported a 40% overall job approval for President Trump, with 93% of Republicans and 1% of Democrats approving — a 92-point partisan gap that matched the widest in Gallup's historical tracking.
Voter registration trends have added urgency to interpretations of such polling. The New York Times reported last month that the number of registered Democrats declined in every state that records party affiliation, a set that includes 30 states. The Times noted the pattern was consistent across swing, red and blue states and cited it as among the factors that helped President Trump win a commanding victory in 2024, including in swing states and the national popular vote.
Experts caution against reading any single poll as determinative of long-term demographic change, noting that attitudes about family formation can be fluid and are influenced by economic conditions, cultural shifts and public policy. NBC's poll results, however, underscore the alignment of social and political preferences among subsets of Gen Z and add to evidence of an evolving partisan map among younger Americans.
The NBC survey comes amid broader national conversations about economic anxiety, climate concerns and cultural issues that surveys suggest shape younger voters' views on parenthood. Some younger adults cite worries about the economy or the state of the world when assessing whether to have children, while other respondents emphasize traditional markers of family and stability.
NBC's poll did not measure respondents' stated fertility plans or barriers to childbearing, such as housing costs or access to health care; it focused on how respondents ranked having children among several dimensions of personal success. The poll's authors and other analysts say further research would be needed to determine how attitudes translate into behavior and long-term demographic trends.
For now, the NBC results add to a pattern of deeply polarized perceptions among younger Americans and have prompted discussion across the political spectrum about what those perceptions might mean for future electoral coalitions and social trends.