There’s a new theory of the case for Donald Trump’s path to the White House, and it goes like this: young men.
And it’s based in truth: Young men are drifting rightward, presenting challenges both at home and abroad. But if Trump is depending on that incel–edgelord crowd, he could be in real trouble.
In March, The Economist published a downright terrifying article:
The Economist analysed polling data from 20 rich countries, using the European Social Survey, America’s General Social Survey and the Korean Social Survey. Two decades ago there was little difference between men and women aged 18-29 on a self-reported scale of 1-10 from very liberal to very conservative. But our analysis found that by 2020 the gap was 0.75 … For context, this is roughly twice the size of the gap in opinion between people with and without a degree in the same year.
Put another way, in 2020 young men were only slightly more likely to describe themselves as liberal than conservative, with a gap of just two percentage points. Young women, however, were much more likely to lean to the left than the right, with a gap of a massive 27 percentage points.
This isn’t just in the United States. It’s happening globally, and it feeds into dangerous right-wing nationalist movements across the globe.
What is going on? The most likely causes of this growing division are education (young men are getting less of it than young women), experience (advanced countries have become less sexist, and men and women experience this differently) and echo chambers (social media aggravate polarisation). Also, in democracies, many politicians on the right are deftly stoking young male grievances, while many on the left barely acknowledge that young men have real problems.
But they do, starting with education. Although the men at the top are doing fine, many of the rest are struggling. In rich countries, 28% of boys but only 18% of girls fail to reach the minimum level of reading proficiency as defined by [Programme for International Student Assessment], which tests high-school students. And women have overtaken men at university. In the [European Union], the share of men aged 25 to 34 with tertiary degrees rose from 21% to 35% between 2002 and 2020. For women it rose faster, from 25% to 46%. In America, the gap is about the same: ten percentage points more young women than men earn a bachelor’s degree.
Reactionary politicians like Donald Trump are undoubtedly stoking those grievances. There’s a reason Trump fraternizes with the worst conservative male influencers, including Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and right-wing influencers Adin Ross, Tim Pool, and Logan Paul. And it doesn’t just massage Trump’s dainty ego, but also it makes electoral sense for a candidate who struggles to expand his existing base of support. Remember, he never hit 47% of the national vote in either of his presidential bids.
The Economist is also right that the left hasn’t acknowledged the problems young men face. In fact, we often mock them for finally having to compete in a world where they have less of an advantage than they used to. That sentiment isn’t wrong, but it’s politically self-sabotaging. We’ve given the right a new demographic weapon to wield against us for generations.
That’s a challenge we’ll need to tackle in the future. But for now, just how dangerous are these young MAGA men to Democratic chances in November?
In 2016, 55% of voters ages 18 to 29 voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, while 36% went for Trump. However, white voters in that age group leaned toward Trump, with him winning 47% to Clinton’s 43%. Young Black voters, on the other hand, voted for Clinton 85-9, and young Latinos went for Clinton 68-26.
In 2020, Biden did even better with young voters, 60% to Trump’s 36%, but Trump won young white voters by more this time: from 4 points in 2016 to 9 points in 2020. Biden did slightly improve on Clinton’s numbers among young Black voters while holding steady among young Latinos.
Indeed, men brought down the Democrats’ margins across the board in 2020. That year, Trump won white women by 11 points and white men by 23 points, while Biden won Black women by 81 points and Black men by 60 points. And Biden won Latino men by 23 points but Latinas by 39 points.
While there is no public exit-poll data that ties in sex, age, and race all together, it’s clear that this gender gap exists at all age groups. The latest Ipsos poll for the Harvard Public Opinion Project didn’t just find a gaping gender gap among voters ages 18 to 29, but it’s been increasing throughout the cycle.
Notably, the gender gap, which stood at 17 points in the Spring poll, has nearly doubled to 30 points. While both men and women are moving toward Harris, the rate of female support eclipses male support.
Given his woeful support among young women, Trump appears to have decided to just bypass them and pin his hopes on young men.
“The [Trump] campaign has homed in on a group of undecided voters that makes up 11 percent of the electorate in battleground states, according to an analysis that Trump advisers presented to reporters in August,” The Washington Post reported in September. “Those voters are mostly men under 50 who identify as moderates, and they are predominantly White but include more Latinos and Asian Americans than the general population, said campaign officials.”
Problem is, young men are not exactly the most reliable voters.
“Young women (55%) voted at a higher rate than young men (44%), and that was true for every racial/ethnic group for which we have reliable data,” concluded a 2021 study of the 2020 election by Tuft University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. “According to estimates based on Catalist voter file data, young white women had the highest turnout rate (60%), followed by young Latinas (56%). The gender gap in electoral participation was 7 points among white and Asian American youth, but much more pronounced for Black and Latino youth, among whom there were 16- and 17-point gaps, respectively, between the voter turnout of young men and women.”
And there are a few early warning signs regarding Trump’s gamble on young men:
The data for (very) early voting in Pennsylvania and Michigan shows not just dramatically low voting numbers overall for these young voters relative to the broader electorate, but young men are behind their female counterparts by double digits (14 points in Pennsylvania and 13 points in Michigan, as of Friday morning)—both slightly larger margins than in 2020. But again, this is very early data.
Democrats have long suffered from their reliance on young voters, the lowest-turnout age demographic. It is kinda funny seeing Republicans now put their eggs in that basket.
Young men look unlikely to bail out Trump. The effort he’s putting into wooing them may very well be wasted this year.
That doesn’t negate the problem these young men will give us in the future, though, as they get older and turn out at higher rates. But for now, based on the limited data we have, young men don’t seem to be the source of votes Trump will need to offset the massive pissed-off female electorate.
