Young Men Are Already Souring on Trump
What exactly drove young men’s hard-right shift is one of the most pressing questions that came out of the 2024 election after male voters under 30 proved key in helping deliver Donald Trump’s victory. Since then, there’s been a flurry of media coverage trying to explore the underpinnings of young men’s support for a 78-year-old convicted felon who was found liable for sexual abuse. While many of these stories hand-wring that young men may be forever lost to MAGA-world, less than 100 days into Trump’s second term, it appears some of them are already experiencing buyer’s remorse.
A new national youth poll released on April 23 by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School found that 59 percent of men between the ages of 18 and 29 disapprove of Trump. Additionally, 47 percent of them say that he’ll hurt the economy, and 40 percent say they are worse off under the current administration compared to the Biden era. Young men had a different take on the president as recently as January. At the time, 62 percent of men under 30 approved of how Trump handled the economy, according to polling by the youth research firm SocialSphere. But by early March, even before tariff chaos and the economic tailspin that followed, that number had already dropped 14 points, to 48 percent, Puck reported. “If life doesn’t become more affordable as Trump promised, and quickly, even his strongest backers may conclude he can’t deliver,” John Della Volpe, who runs SocialSphere, told the outlet.
This slide is not limited to just young men — several polls show Trump is facing a general downward lurch in his job-approval ratings. A CNN poll released on April 27 found that Trump’s approval rating at the 100-day mark of his administration is the lowest for any newly elected president since Dwight Eisenhower seven decades ago. And a Pew Research Center survey also released on April 23 showed Trump’s net approval dropping from minus 4 percent in late January to minus 19 percent in April.
But the 18-to-29-year-old male voting bloc backed Trump over Vice-President Kamala Harris by a notable 14-point margin in November, following a campaign in which the Trump-Vance ticket heavily centered a retrograde, rightwing vision of masculinity and promised better financial outcomes for men. Trump framed himself as a “protector,” echoing some corners of the manosphere; made several stops across the Joe Rogan/Theo Von/Nelk Boys bro-podcast universe; and tapped directly into some men’s grievances that they’re “not allowed” to be men anymore. Some of these voters bought into the campaign’s gender backlash, as demonstrated by the “Your body, my choice” chant and other violent rhetoric against women spreading like wildfire in the days after the election. But experts say young men’s anti-establishment leanings and their frustrations over their economic prospects following the Covid-19 pandemic also in part fueled Trump’s popularity with them.
That anti-Establishment streak among this group isn’t going anywhere. The latest Harvard poll found that only 17 percent of young men trust Congress all or most of the time. The federal government and the Supreme Court fared slightly better, at 20 and 32 percent, respectively. But just because young men may be souring on Trump now doesn’t mean that they’ll leap into the arms of the Democratic Party. Overall, 71 percent of the men surveyed disapprove of the job congressional Democrats are doing, and 70 percent agree that elected officials in general seem motivated by selfish reasons.
The poll also found that young men’s economic anxieties continue to linger — 37 percent of those surveyed are struggling to get by, and 56 percent of them are fearful of the future. This gives Democrats an opportunity to articulate a path forward that strengthens young men’s financial futures rather than those of the ultrawealthy, as the current administration is doing. Rebuilding trust with these voters won’t be easy, but Democrats will have to if they want to win future elections.
This post has been updated to reflect Trump’s declining overall approval ratings.