Opinion | Have Young People Really Turned MAGA?

But voting for Mr. Trump did not necessarily mean that these young people had become MAGA faithful. Responding to a survey I conducted last summer, one young woman from the West Coast, a Latina commuter student with a lot of financial aid at a large, nonselective public university, reported that though she was somewhat liberal and concerned about the environment, she was planning to cast her ballot for Mr. Trump. Her vote would be about the economy, she said — about how, under the Biden administration, people were “not able to afford basic needs.”

Immigration was also an important issue for some young Trump voters — but not, it seems, in the strongly partisan way it was important for older voters. Polling in September by Harvard’s Institute of Politics found that more than a third of Americans ages 18 to 29 supported mass deportation of immigrants who were in the country illegally — yet the Pew Research Center reported in December that only 10 percent of young adults said that levels of legal immigration should be reduced. This suggests that young people tended to be motivated more by economic concerns associated with large-scale, unregulated immigration than by nationalist or xenophobic appeals, pockets of far-right support notwithstanding.

Then there is the matter of young people who might otherwise have voted for Ms. Harris abstaining from voting. Many young moderates saw her as too progressive or “woke.” Many young progressives saw her as not progressive enough, especially in light of the Biden administration’s military aid to Israel. Insofar as these people stayed home on Election Day, they led to an increase in the share of the young adult vote for Mr. Trump — but not an increase in the number of young people who supported him.

I’m a sociologist, not a political strategist, but I believe there are lessons here for both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats, thinking they have the wind of history at their backs, have often taken the support of young adults for granted, focusing their efforts more on getting them to the polls than earning their vote. Yet long-term social change doesn’t automatically translate into electoral success. While young people are becoming more socially progressive, more are pocketbook voters than Democrats have realized.

Republicans, for their part, should heed the limits of their mandate from young Americans, such as it is. The G.O.P.’s core base remains older white people who say they no longer recognize the country that young people are ushering into being. The more the Trump administration caters to these voters by doubling down on prayer in public schools, for example, or pursuing a national abortion ban or imposing restrictions on L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights, the more it risks alienating younger, more socially accepting voters who swung toward Mr. Trump for bigger paychecks and less expensive housing — especially if the economy falters.