According to recent polling, young men are much more Republican than young women, and are poised to back Trump on election day.
In an extremely tight election race, young men could sway the result in favor of former President Donald Trump, polling suggests.
With only a few days to go until the election, polls are closer than ever, with 538’s tracker showing Vice President Kamala Harris leading by 1.2 points, while every swing state is within a 2-point margin. Meanwhile, the Cook Political Report released its final projections on Friday, which revealed the election is a toss-up.
Amid what could be the closest election in 150 years, both candidates are making last-ditch attempts to appeal to their bases to go out and vote. For Trump, that is mostly older voters and white working-class voters, as well as men. For Harris it is younger and college-educated voters, as well as Black and Hispanic voters and women. But recent polling indicates that there is one group that is shifting toward the right—and it could cost Harris the election.
According to recent polling, young men are much more Republican than young women and are poised to back Trump.
While there aren’t many polls that report results among young men and young women, an average of the last three New York Times/Siena College national polls, conducted between September and October, revealed that Trump leads Harris among young men, 58 percent to 37 percent, although Harris holds an even larger lead among young women, 67 percent to 28 percent.
Another poll, conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School among 2,002 18-to-29-year-olds in September, found a 10-point gender gap, with 38 percent of men supporting Harris, compared to 28 percent of women, and 49 percent of men supporting Harris, compared to 59 percent of women.
Recent polling conducted by the Alliance for Black Equality, conducted between October 15 and 19, found that Generation Z Black men were the most likely group of Black voters to support Trump, with 35 percent of the demographic backing the former president. The poll surveyed nearly 1500 respondents and had a margin of error of approximately +/- 2.6 percent.
Newsweek has contacted the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment via email.
“The young men’s vote could be decisive in a very close election”, Jackson Katz, the co-founder of the Young Men’s Research Initiative told Newsweek. “There’s a huge gender gap among younger voters; young women support Harris overwhelmingly. Young men support her as well, but by much smaller percentages.”
For Katz, the appeal of Trump and his campaign to young men lies in his identity-based campaign strategy.
“The Trump campaign’s main strategy with men—especially, but not exclusively, white men—is an identity-based appeal. They want to drive home the idea that ‘real men vote Republican'”, he said. “It’s not about issues, per se. This is perhaps even more apparent when it comes to young men. They hold liberal and progressive views on a number of issues—abortion rights, climate change, support for labor unions, etc. And yet the youngest cohort appears to be moving to the right in terms of party identification and support for Trump. What accounts for this, I think, is identity politics. Trump and MAGA have made explicit outreach to men, and young men, a critical part of their strategy.”
“Since Donald Trump emerged as a presidential candidate in 2016, the main goal of the Trump campaign has been to frame it as a men’s movement and to frame the Democrats as the party of women and feminized men, and it’s been unbelievably relentless”, he added.
