Commentary October 28, 2024

Are Young Men Really Going to Vote for Donald Trump?

It would be historic if it happens.

Daniel A. Cox

The Liberal Patriot

For the past two decades, young voters have been a reliable vote for Democratic presidential candidates. The 2024 election will be no exception, with a sizable number of polls showing Harris winning the youth vote overall, if by somewhat smaller margins than past Democratic nominees. There is, however, one crucial caveat: Polls are showing Trump tied with Harris or even leading with young male voters.

But which polls should we trust? In The New York Times, Nate Cohn reviewed recent polling to show that in five of seven high-quality polls young men are leaning right, sometimes by large margins. The NYT/Siena poll has Trump up with young men by 17 percentage points. But Harvard’s Institute of Politics poll, conducted among young adults, shows Harris up by an even larger margin.

What should we believe?

The political evolution of young women has followed a clear and explicable trajectory, but for young men the picture is far murkier. Gallup polls reveal a precipitous decline in Democratic identity among young men over the past decade, but there is not much evidence that they have become much more conservative. Rather, the defining characteristic of young men is a mutual political disaffection—they don’t much care for Republicans or Democrats. A poll we conducted last year found that nearly four in ten young men had a negative view of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

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