Former President Donald Trump has made gains with many demographics since his first presidential bid in 2016. This time, he’s hoping to add votes from a new demographic: young men.
There are signs that the bloc could break for Trump in 2024, which could spell trouble for Vice President Kamala Harris in what is shaping up to be a tight race.
As signs of this shift have become more apparent, both parties have sought to reach out to the group.
Trump made a three-hour appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” on Oct. 25, a podcast popular with younger Americans, especially men. According to data from Media Monitors, 71 percent of Rogan’s audience is male, with an average age of 24.
In past cycles, Republican presidential nominees haven’t spent much time courting the youth—voters aged 30 and older have historically been far more favorable to the GOP than their younger counterparts, who have skewed more liberal.
In 2020, for instance, President Joe Biden vastly outperformed Trump in support among young voters. According to national exit polling by CNN, Biden received 60 percent support among 18- to 29-year-old voters, and 52 percent support among 30- to 44-year-old voters.
But those top-line numbers hide a more polarized environment among young voters: Young women are much more Democratic in their voting patterns, while young men have historically been split about 50–50.
This election, Trump may be on track to significantly improve his support among younger voters, particularly those aged 18 to 44—a trend driven by men moving to the Republican Party under Trump.
“What you can see over the three cycles [from 2016 to 2024] is a general rightward shift in younger voters,” Mark Mitchell, chief of polling firm Rasmussen, told The Epoch Times.
About two dozen young men who spoke to The Epoch Times across the United States cited economics as their biggest issue in the election, mentioning housing, tax rates, and inflation as their most pressing concerns.
Several indicated they were drawn to Trump’s masculine persona—a persona that often has the opposite effect on young women. Others say they’ve been left behind by Democrats, suggesting the party focuses too much on issues, such as abortion, that affect men less; others feel villainized by left-wing ideology.
Mitchell said that Rasmussen’s current polling has Trump leading Harris 47 to 46 percent among 18- to 39-year-old men. Women in the same age bracket, meanwhile, prefer Harris 48 to 44 percent.
A New York Times/Sienna national poll that concluded on Oct. 23 also found modest gains for Republicans among youth and men. The pollsters have substantially overestimated Democratic support in the past.
Their most recent poll found that Democrats have lost about 4 points of support among men of all ages when compared to 2020, while Trump has gained about 2 points.
The poll also showed substantial improvements for Trump with young voters, winning 7 percent more support among 18- to 29-year-olds than he did in 2020.
Party strategists and voters on the ground have noticed the trend, too: Republicans have sought to capitalize on it while Democrats have sought to reverse it.
Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, said that dwindling support among young men is a legitimate concern for the Democratic Party this year.
“It is a big problem for them, potentially,” he said. “They’ve counted on getting the very young voters. They don’t? Problem.”
Economic Anxiety
When speaking to young male voters, one issue comes up again and again: the economy.
Young men are anxious about the future—they express fears about housing, frustration over grocery and fuel prices, and concerns about the general economic trajectory of the country. Many feel the economy was simply better under Trump.
Eighteen-year-old Caleb Boyt told The Epoch Times that Trump seems to offer the best economic future for him.
“Being a young man in America, I feel like [Trump] sets me up in the best possible way, whether that be me just entering the workforce or being able to afford things and save up my money better,” he said.
Experts told The Epoch Times that economics generally feel more pressing to men: Despite the broad social changes since the 20th century, many men still feel obligated to be the primary breadwinner and to provide for their spouses and children.
Women are also far more likely to go to college than men. Bullock noted that around 60 percent of new college enrollees today are women. Meanwhile, job prospects for men have dwindled with the mass departure of solid blue-collar employment to cheaper labor markets overseas.
“The success that a young man could have had a generation or two ago—completing high school, or maybe you drop out of high school, but you could get a pretty good paying job, go to work in a factory somewhere, and you [could] support a family,” Bullock said. “That scenario is less applicable today.”
The young women who spoke to The Epoch Times were far less likely to mention the economy as a leading issue, instead focusing on abortion or Trump’s personality.
Sarah Chamberlain, president and chief executive of The Republican Main Street Partnership, a moderate Republican political organization, focuses on trends among women.
She told The Epoch Times that many young women bank on being able to find a partner who can provide for them, while men generally prefer to be the main provider.
“I think women have the luxury to worry about other things,” Chamberlain said.
Thus, abortion and candidate personalities are more compelling and pressing issues for women, Chamberlain said.
Men, by contrast, tend to assume that they’ll be primarily responsible for providing for a wife and family, Chamberlain said, leading to increased economic pressure on them from a young age.
That aligns with what The Epoch Times observed: Young men consistently listed economic concerns as their biggest issue with few exceptions, regardless of which candidate they were backing. Some cited the ability to provide for a family in the future as a leading concern for them.
Nazir Mbami, a black voter who will turn 18 shortly before the election and plans on supporting Trump, told The Epoch Times during a Trump event in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that the border and the economy were his top priorities.
“We are losing jobs, people like me, who are low socioeconomic [status]—people are losing jobs because they’re being filled by people that are … not supposed to be here,” Mbami said, referencing the mass influx of illegal immigrants under the current administration.
Mbami particularly referenced the housing market, a leading concern among Gen Z voters on both sides of the political spectrum—as well as among those who spoke to The Epoch Times.
As both interest rates and home prices have surged, one survey found that only 18 percent of Gen Z respondents could afford a home today; 54 percent worry that they’ll never be able to own a home.
Mbami noted that today, he would need a salary of over $100,000 to comfortably afford a home, a figure borne out by research conducted by Zillow. That examination of the market found that buyers currently need an income of $106,000 to be able to afford a house—$47,000 more than was needed just four years ago.
“That’s not very realistic, especially [for] entry-level,” he said.
Others mentioned tax rates, gas prices, and grocery prices as their biggest economic challenge at the moment. Even many who said they were backing Harris confessed that they thought Trump would handle the economy better.
What Else Is Driving Men’s Shift?
Beside economics, the young men who spoke to The Epoch Times proposed additional reasons that Trump has such strong appeal among young men.
Many cited the influence of Trump’s masculine persona, referencing his reaction to getting shot in the ear during an attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. A famous photo from the shooting shows Trump, surrounded by Secret Service agents, pumping his fist into the air as blood streaked down the right side of his face.
The incident prompted Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX, Tesla, and social media platform X, to endorse Trump for president. Since then, Musk, who is popular with younger men, has worked toward getting Trump reelected.
Many young men have posted on social media comparisons of Trump to President Theodore Roosevelt, another commander-in-chief popular among men for his tough, masculine persona; Roosevelt once famously delivered a speech just after being shot in the chest, an attack he narrowly survived.
Liem Jurley, an 18-year-old studying business at Kennesaw State University, located just north of Atlanta, told The Epoch Times that Trump’s personality is a big draw for him.
When asked why he is backing Trump, Jurley responded simply, “Because he’s cool.” He said that he knows many men who feel the same.
“We’re the bros, and we’re all supporting Trump,” he said.
Luke Meadows, an 18-year-old studying accounting at Kennesaw State, also referenced Trump’s personality.
“Trump is probably more popular because he seems cooler [to young men],” Meadows said.
Trump’s personality seems to have the opposite effect on women. Many young women who spoke to The Epoch Times cited personality as a leading reason for their opposition to Trump.
“The personality that drives the men [toward Trump] is driving the women away,” Chamberlain said.
Others cited the influence of media and the internet, referencing figures such as Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, and others who have a predominantly male audience online. These influencers are sometimes regarded as belonging to the “manosphere,” a sometimes-pejorative term used to describe online spaces and voices that appeal to men.
Still others cited men’s increased opposition to “woke” positions among the American left.
“I have definitely seen … young men feeling increasingly alienated and attacked by Democrats and the left, [and] Kamala Harris in particular, but broadly the sort of woke movement on the American left in general,” Connor Alford, who teaches political science at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, told The Epoch Times.
In conjunction with their declining economic prospects, Alford posited that many men feel villainized by the left even as they face their own struggles—higher suicide rates, more dangerous occupations, and much higher rates of homelessness.
Brian Seitchik, a Republican strategist, told The Epoch Times that Democrats are “focused on issues that are just not as important to men.”
“The Democrats [have a] myopic focus on abortion as inflation runs rampant and we have open borders. It’s adversely impacting their support among young male voters,” he said.
Alex Cam, a 20-year-old student at Waynesburg University in Pennsylvania who is undecided, agreed.
“I think it just goes back to how abortion doesn’t pertain to men necessarily as much as it does to women,” Cam said, opining that Democrats are focusing on the issue to their own detriment.
Seitchik said a winning strategy for the Trump campaign involves simply “highlighting the absurdity of Democrat wokeism.”
Both Parties Reach Out to Men
As these trends have become evident, Republicans have sought to take advantage of the opportunity it represents as Democrats attempt to staunch the bleeding.
Republicans’ efforts at outreach to young men have been apparent since the Republican National Convention in July.
The convention featured remarks from superstar WWE wrestler Hulk Hogan expressing support for Trump. The former president’s introduction on the final night of the convention was given by Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), who is also popular among men.
Trump has spent the final weeks of his campaign appearing on podcasts with a predominantly male audience, such as comedian Andrew Schulz’s “Flagrant,” Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend,” and had an appearance with former pro wrestler Mark Calaway, aka “The Undertaker.”
On his most-anticipated podcast appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” he spent more than 30 minutes of the three-hour appearance talking about golf, boxing, UFC fighting, and other sports.
Meanwhile, Democrats have also noticed the trend, and attempted to reverse it.
Neama Rahmani, a California-based attorney and Democrat, noted that appealing to men was likely a big part of Harris’s motivation in selecting Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate: Walz was a football coach, has publicly discussed his love of video games—a male-dominated hobby—and has taken high-profile hunting trips.
On Oct. 27, in a fresh effort to appeal to men, Walz and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) took to popular streaming platform Twitch and streamed themselves playing “Madden NFL,” a popular football series overwhelmingly played by men.
Former President Barack Obama also sought to counter the Democratic Party’s dwindling support among men in controversial remarks in which he accused young black men of sexism for being tepid in their support for Harris.
“You just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and reasons for that,” Obama said.
Young men who spoke with The Epoch Times, however, said Harris’s gender isn’t a motivating factor in their opposition to her candidacy: Only two said that they opposed a woman president in principle. Most said policy is most important.
Vote Save America, a pro-Harris group, released an ad attempting to appeal to men. It featured men in cowboy hats who were sitting on truck beds and touting their masculine bona fides: love of bourbon, rare steak, donuts, and cars.
“I eat carburetors for breakfast,” one of the men said. The men then declared they were “man enough” to vote for Harris.
The ad was broadly ridiculed online, with many wondering whether or not it was satire.
Rahmani suggested that Democrats should instead focus on endorsements and events with famous figures such as Bruce Springsteen and Eminem, both of whom recently campaigned with Harris.
Rahmani was critical of Harris campaigning with popular musician Lizzo, who he said wouldn’t bring many new voters into the Democratic fold, and certainly wouldn’t bring back young men.
While these are concerning signs for Democrats’ popularity among young men, it remains to be seen how much of an impact they will have on Election Day.