The 2024 election didn’t go as planned for Democrats. Besides solidifying the working class and non-college-educated voters in President Donald Trump’s camp, the race exposed the degree to which young men are disenchanted with the Democratic Party. They have been steadily shifting away from Democrats over the last two decades, but most of this drop-off has happened since 2016, coinciding with Trump’s arrival on the political scene. Trump turned a predictable Generation Z gender partisan gap into a chasm. While 51% of young men used to identify as Democrat, now more young men identify as Republican, according to the Survey Center on American Life.
Since losing in November, Democrats have tried to figure out what drove young men away. Self-proclaimed bro whisperer Tim Walz recently consulted his son on the question. Gus Walz boiled it down to MAGA’s “entertainment” appeal and sports-like camaraderie, according to his father. Reducing to simpletons the very demographic their party is so desperate to court, the pair missed a more intuitive answer. Young men gravitated toward the party, and the person, that projected confidence and normalcy.
