Last week Kamala Harris’s running mate Tim Walz posted a revealing video. Walz, a former teacher, was surrounded by a group of young men saying that they were voting for him.
So what? Young men aren’t rallying to the Harris-Walz ticket the way young women are. In fact they’re a group that seems to be slipping away from the Democrats; the clip was a bid to woo them back.
According to NYT/Siena polling there’s a 51-point disparity between the voting intentions of young women and young men in six crucial swing states. Harris and Trump are appealing to two different Americas defined to a surprising extent by gender.
On the slide. The Democratic high-water mark for support from men under 30 was 2008, when Obama won 62 per cent of their vote. Biden in 2020 won 52 per cent. Harris is proving less popular with young men, and Trump is trying to consolidate his advantage.
Broadside. His campaign has spent heavily on ads appearing alongside TV broadcasts of college football, NFL and major league baseball games. Trump himself appears often at Ultimate Fighting Championship events, which claim 42 million mainly male fans with a median age of 35.
Laser targeted. Bypassing traditional media, Trump has reached millions more young men by featuring in esoteric videos with their heroes. His recent appearances include:
– a round of golf with two-time major winner Bryson DeChambeau (12 million views);
– a TikTok clip in which he dances with streamer Adin Ross (58.5 million views); and
– a series of interviews by YouTuber Logan Paul (6.5 million views), comedian Theo Von (13 million views), and scientist-turned-podcaster Lex Fridman (4.9 million views).
The videos can be jarring for those who’ve only ever seen Trump speak in meandering soliloquies at rallies and pressers – precisely because they are conversations. He talked to Paul about German shepherds, discussed cocaine with Von, and philosophised about death with Fridman. “These appearances are electorally savvy,” says JP Villasmil, a Conservative writer and young Trump voter. “He’s playing to his strengths.”
By extemporising on death? No. By doing offbeat interviews which barely touch on policy, Trump is trying to defy two countervailing data points – namely that
- young men are still more likely to identify as Democrats than Republicans, according to the Public Religion Research Institute; and
- a majority of these men support abortion rights and same-sex marriage, issues negatively associated with the Republican Party (see 100-year life below).
The bigger picture. Many young men “feel put on the bottom of the hierarchy”, says Niobe Way, a developmental psychology professor who’s studied boys and young men for 40 years. “Trump basically says: ‘Hey! Your needs are more important than anyone else’s.’” If that’s what’s going on, crypto pledges and well-calibrated Walz videos may not shift the needle.
What’s more. A new NYT/Siena poll has Trump beating Harris in three Sun Belt states key to winning the White House. The breakdown shows that Trump has men to thank.
