‘No, Gen Z Do Not Want to Be Ruled by a Dictator’

If you’ve had even half an eye on the newspapers in recent weeks you could not have failed to spot the numerous headlines claiming that ‘52% of Gen Z believe the UK should be a dictatorship’.

This shocking statistic was the metaphorical ship that launched a thousand horrified think-pieces. Guardian columnist David Mitchell branded young people ‘moronic’, while Politics Joe’s Oli Dugmore gave a more thoughtful take involving the broken social contract which sees Gen Z struggling to find well paid jobs, access affordable housing or pay off student debt. 

My first response, however, was ‘this really doesn’t seem like it’s accurate’. My job, which I’ve done since 2008, involves visiting an average of three schools or colleges per week, all over the UK. I like to think I know Gen Z – those born between 1996 and 2012 – quite well. I find it hard to believe more than half of them relish the prospect of authoritarianism. 

Turns out, Dugmore’s valid contribution notwithstanding, there are reasons to doubt it. The original poll, conducted by pollsters Craft for Channel 4, actually asked Gen Z if they thought the UK would be better off with a ‘strong leader, without the need for elections?’ At no point was the word ‘dictatorship’ mentioned. One could argue it would be tautologous to do so, but if we’re going to be making bold statements about an entire demographic it’s best to err on the side of precision.

Furthermore, the polling methodology itself (conducted by a pollster that is not a member of the British Polling Council) has been widely questioned by polling experts, given the data contradicts a number of other similar studies, such as that conducted by Ipsos for King’s College in 2023, which found that Gen Z have an even higher proportion of participants believing it’s important to live in a democracy than millennials. 

Separate long-term polling by the British Social Attitudes Survey also found that “younger people have always been less authoritarian than older people.”

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As a result I decided to conduct my own independent anecdotal research for Byline Times. I have harvested the political views of 200 Gen Zs aged 16-28. To be clear I should state that my research is far from perfect. It’s a survey rather than a peer reviewed poll and I relied on pre-existing networks from my work in schools and colleges. However, I did try to maintain as rigorous standards as possible by anonymising the data, ensuring young people from all over England and Wales were surveyed and asking teachers, university tutors and colleagues of Gen Zs to pass along my questionnaire/conduct discussions so the process wasn’t influenced by my presence within it. 

I also asked less leading questions than ‘wouldn’t a strong leader be great instead of all this pesky voting which clearly isn’t giving you anything you want or need?’. Instead, I asked whether they considered themselves to be politically engaged, what they thought the most important political issues of the day were, if they would vote, whether they felt any party reflected their concerns and how they responded to the idea that people their age would like to live in a dictatorship. 

My sample is obviously unlikely to be wholly representative of the Gen Z population.

However, far from finding a mass of dictatorship-loving young people, my survey of 200 Gen Zs failed to come across a single respondent who would personally prefer to live in a dictatorship.

This is curious, since British newspapers have so confidently declared it to be a ‘trend’.

Instead, the most common response to my question was either ‘lol WUT?’ or ‘lol NAH’. A 21 year old from North East England wrote ‘while the issue of young people not engaging in politics and others losing hope with leaders who pay little attention to us and our futures, I do not see this as evidence of preferring to live under a dictatorship’. A 22 year old from London said they actually thought it was a complete inversion of the truth because ‘people my age are hypersensitive about government overstep’. 

Some participants did concede that they could see why others might find the prospect of dictatorship appealing, but personally believed it was a naïve and kneejerk response to the challenges being faced by people their age. 

So, now we’ve put a big hole in the claim that Gen Z love dictators, the question remains: Where are Gen Z really, politically? Here I found some recurring themes. A large number, when asked ‘what is the most important issue affecting your generation?’ wrote ‘everything Donald Trump is doing right now’. Most who responded this way went on to say they would vote Labour, Lib Dem or Green, so we can assume they don’t look upon events in the United States favourably. 

Around a third said the genocide in Gaza and preventing Israel from further decimating Palestine was their most pressing concern, with similar numbers citing climate change. Those who were currently at university were, unsurprisingly, most likely to list student fees as their top issue. Fixing the NHS and building more affordable housing were also popular answers across the board. 

Approximately one quarter of teenage boys under the age of eighteen wrote ‘too many illegal immigrants’. In keeping with that sentiment, most of them also wrote that they would vote for Reform if an election was held tomorrow, but actually wished they were US citizens so they could vote for Trump. Before you despair, at least as many from that demographic cited the normalisation of far-right views amongst their peers as their number one concern. 

Their female and non-binary counterparts in the under 18 bracket were most likely to say they would vote for the Green Party. Overall, Labour emerged as the most popular party across the Gen Z cohort. However, a lot of those who said they would vote for Labour added that they would do so reluctantly to keep something worse out, which was variously described as ‘fascism’, ‘the far right’ or, simply ‘Farage’. 

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Around a third said they wouldn’t vote because they didn’t think there was anyone worth voting for. Before you throw your hands up and cry ‘these young’uns and their blithe apathy!’ consider that, in the last UK General Election, only 67.3% of those eligible to vote did so. This makes Gen Z broadly in line with the wider population. 

The media seem determined to speak about Gen Z as though they are a peculiarity. This is in part the age-old trend for dunking on young people, a fashion which has existed since Socrates wrote ‘[young people] are high minded because they have not been humbled by life, not have they experienced the force of circumstances.

They think they know everything and are always quite sure about it’ in the fourth century BC. It is also, I suspect, due to Gen Z being children of the technological revolution, the first generation to be born into an era of smartphones and instant internet access. The fallacy is that this makes them more prone to online radicalisation, when even the most casual observer of the behaviour of Boomers on Facebook could reassure you that this isn’t true. 

Gen Z aren’t a monolith, but they also aren’t an aberration. They’re largely like the rest of the population. A vocal minority are being wooed by the far right and the remainder are horrified but equally disillusioned by what ostensibly more liberal parties have to offer. 

My other main takeaway from my research was this: Any left-leaning party hoping to inspire under 30s to vote in 2029 would do well to focus on young women and non-binary people. They, I believe, are our best line of defence against the rising tide of populism.