The political divide between high school boys and girls across America has widened tremendously in recent years, as more boys identify as conservative while girls are moving to the Left, according to a recent survey.
Annual polling over the past three years conducted by Monitoring the Future and the University of Michigan showed that more 12th-grade boys are identifying as conservative than liberal, while 12th-grade girls’ liberal political affiliation continues to rise, The Hill reported. The most recent survey showed that 23% of 12th-grade boys identified as conservative, while only 13% of senior boys considered themselves liberal. Around 30% of senior girls in high school identified as liberals in 2021 and 2022, up from 25% in 2020, according to Monitoring the Future.
Psychotherapist Thomas Kersting told “Fox and Friends” that he’s not surprised by the study’s findings.
“You look at … all the messaging in society and it’s sort of like everything is about advancing within minorities … and young men, young boys sort of being left out; they’re sort of being left behind,” Kersting said. “And then you have politicians out there saying things like the number one problem in America is white men and things of that nature, but I think 12th-grade boys are kind of seeing through this.”
“We’re creating this idea that if you’re a male, then there’s something wrong with that and that you’re bad,” he added.
According to Monitoring the Future, liberal high school boys outnumbered conservatives in the late 1970s, during the Jimmy Carter presidency, and for a brief time in the late 2000s, while President Barack Obama was in the White House. Since 2016, however, the trend toward conservatism for high school boys has grown considerably.
High school girls, on the other hand, have drastically moved to the Left in the past decade, a trend also shown by recent Gallup polls. Young women are shifting Left as the Democratic Party doubles down on its commitment to ensuring abortion access after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last summer.
As boys in high school shift to the Right, fewer young men are graduating from America’s universities, which many conservatives believe have become beacons of leftist ideology. In the 2018-2019 academic year, just 74 men received a bachelor’s degree for every 100 women who completed their program. As of 2023, 64% of women at public universities were graduating compared to 58% of men. In overall enrollment, women are outnumbering men by almost 60% to 40%, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
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While high school boys trend to the Right and girls move to the Left, most high school students, regardless of gender, don’t consider themselves conservative or liberal. More than 40% responded to the liberal-conservative question on the survey saying, “None of the above” or “I don’t know.”