Donald Trump Won Among Young Men. Why?
Nic Sumners, a 21-year-old cosmetic car repairman from Virginia, says he is pro-choice. But when he voted in the 2024 presidential election, he did so for Donald Trump.
Despite his personal beliefs, he says that Trump talks about the American people in a way that resonates with him, withoutâin his opinionâfaulting him for his gender and sexual orientation.
âIâm a straight white man, and I feel like we take the blame for a lot of things,â Sumners says.
âOf course there are bad guys,â he adds, insisting heâs not one of them just because he voted for Trump. But what appealed to him about Donald Trump was that âhis campaign was not coming after us. He was highlighting the American people, which we are. It doesnât matter what color you are, what you may identify as. Since I wasnât excluded, I resonated with it.â
Economics also played a partâSumnerâs mother lost her home during Joe Bidenâs presidency (though he says she actually voted for Kamala Harris), and heâs struggled to afford his own rent. He appreciates Trumpâs âemphasis on the economy and building America up again.â
But one of the biggest issues for him has been the way men in general are assumed to be inherently bad people because of their politics or their gender.
âItâs a touchy subject,â he admits. âThe people Iâve spoken to who voted for Harris are constantly saying that we’re racist, that we’re misogynistic, that, you know, we’re transphobic. And itâs like they donât understand that most people arenât like that. Of course, thereâs those fringe people who are, but most people just want to live and not be bothered by name-calling.â
And so Sumners became one of the 55% of young male voters aged 18 to 29 who voted for Trump this election. A huge jump from 2020, when 41% of 18-to-29-year-old men backed him. Itâs also in direct contrast to young womenâ58% of whom backed Harris.
So why did so many men swing right during the 2024 election? Much has been said about Trumpâs embrace of masculinity throughout his campaignâtraversing the podcast sphere with often provocative, highly popular personalities like Adin Ross, influencer and wrestler Logan Paul, Flagrantâs Andrew Schulz, and of course, Joe Rogan. And then thereâs the enduring image of 71-year-old former WWE wrestler Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt off at the Republican National Convention.
Others have suggested that, because Trump has proudly taken ownership for the overturning of Roe v. Wade (and as a consequence empowering the curbs across the country on reproductive freedom), young male voters must not care at all about womenâs rights. A line of thinking that has been emboldened by controversial figures like far-right pundit and proud incel Nick Fuentes, who celebrated Trumpâs victory with wildly offensive takes like âYour body, my choice.â
But truth be told, thatâs not where the majority of the young men Iâve spoken with standâeven if they proudly voted for Trump. Many young men say they voted for the former president not because they are anti-choice or against human rights or are even that pro-masculinity, but because theyâre tired of feeling bad for being a man.
Iâve interviewed young men who echo Sumnersâs concerns with what he sees as an overfixation on gender from the left. While itâs difficult, they say, to point to policies that are explicitly anti-man, they argue theyâve been made to feel uncomfortable for being who they are. âââI feel like thereâs this cultural frustration that young men have that theyâre not allowed to be young men,â says 26-year-old Benji Backer from Arizona. âThat probably went too far. No oneâs telling women they canât be women.â
Backer, author of The Conservative Environmentalist, says he sees growing support for Trump in his communityâincluding among people who also care about left-leaning social issues such as access to reproductive health care. He points to the fact that, as a state, Arizona voted both to protect abortion and for Trump: âYoung people specifically, weâre trying to make it, trying to find our way in the world, get stable jobs, incomes, survive without living with parents.â
While young women may struggle to understand these young menâs viewpointsâespecially with so many fundamental rights under attack and womenâs health care already lethally compromised in states with abortion bansâmany young men say their focus is more on equal economic opportunity than abortion.
In some cities across the country, young women make more money than men (though in the vast majority, men still make more). Theyâre also attending college at higher rates. And single women are buying homes at higher rates than single men. So some of the tropes about their role in enabling the patriarchy no longer resonate with todayâs youngest men, some of whom say they donât have first-hand experience with that world order.
âWe feel really blamed for things that we havenât had an opportunity to impact,â Backer says, adding that he has tried to ensure pay equity across his business. âI have always prioritized that in everything that I do, and so it doesnât feel good to feel like Iâm being blamed. I get told all the time, âYouâre a white man, sit down and wait your turn,â and itâs like, âWell, I canât change the fact that Iâm white, I canât change the fact that Iâm a man, I canât change the fact that decades or centuries ago, people made bad decisions.â All I can do is do what I can do now. And what Iâm doing now is treating people as fairly as possible because thatâs what I firmly believe in.â
For Coby, a 19-year-old student at the University of Michigan, it was a combination of identity politics issues as well as economics that drew him to Trump. He was in high school during the 2020 election, and while he grew up a Republican and was supportive of Trump before he could vote, he says he started learning more about politics amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, he says, he prioritizes economic growth, trying to end wars, and âcommon sense policies,â adding that he appreciates Robert F. Kennedy Jr.âs stance on junk food and was glad when Trump brought him into his orbit: âA lot of young guys are really into health now more than ever. Thereâs this whole wave about rejecting processed foods.â
But Coby, who only wants to be identified by his first name, highlights the way men are talked about as oppressors by some on the left as one of the reasons he sees men trending politically right. âWhen you tell a young white guy, like, âHey, youâre an oppressor, and because youâre white, you have privileges that your Black and Hispanic peers didnât have, and youâre inherently at fault, or youâre guilty for that, which is what a lot of the left wings or Democrats are saying, theyâre gonna reject that,â he says. âWeâre not racist; weâre not misogynistic. Weâre just normal people, and we [are] friends with everyone. Weâre tired of hearing a lot of this BS from a lot of the far left.â
These concerns outweigh, for him, issues like abortion rightsâeven though Coby is pro-choice. But âbecause Trump got rid of Roe v. Wade,â he says, the issue was not a priority for him when casting his ballot in Michigan. âFor the past four years the Biden administration couldnât really do anything about it to federally protect abortion rights.â In his opinion, âThat issue is kind of settled. Itâs been given to the states.â
A lot of young men I spoke to, like Coby, did care about abortion but also felt it wasnât their issueâeven the ones, like 19-year-old Alex Georges, from Pennsylvania, who planned to vote for Harris. âWith abortion, obviously men have their say about it. But women are the ones thatâŠitâs their body.â
An issue that a lot of men did feel was important to them, though, was the ability to speak freely without being ostracized for viewpoints that donât align with that of their peers. Coby says he feels this most on campus. Last week, Coby says, students and professors expressed their sadness with the election outcome. âI would not have the courage to raise my hand and then speak, âHey, no, Iâm happy with the election outcome,ââ he says, adding, âItâs very hard for Republicans to speak up. Iâm afraid of having a bad rep with a professor.â
For students like Coby, this can lead to resentment. âItâs very isolating. I feel like thereâs a sense of moral superiority that occurs. When it comes to people who are within academia, they have this sense of superiority for who they vote for and what they value. And if youâre against that, then they kind of look down upon you.â
Provocative as this might be to many women, many of the young men Iâve met over the last year have told me that they are feeling marginalized, especially by the left. Joe Mitchell, 27, from Iowa, tells me, âI think young men have felt like they have been suppressed to a certain extent.â
Mitchell started an organization called Run GenZ, which recruits and trains young conservatives to run for public office across the country. He also, in line with so many of his peers, voted for Trump.
âYoung men have started rejecting some of the ideology of the âwokeâ set of standards that are put in place for them,â he says. âThe Trump campaign specifically targeted that demographic and courted them pretty heavily. There was already a large sense of young men wanting to find a party or people that would help embrace them.â