Men who turned out for the GOP in 2024 because they were alienated by progressive overreach may stay home because of concerns about the cost of living.
After struggling to win over young men in 2024, Democrats sense an opportunity to make inroads with a demographic that’s become increasingly disillusioned with the party in power.
Two years ago, the GOP was able to capitalize on an environment in which young men felt either ignored or actively disliked by the Democratic Party. But with the cost of living going up — thanks in part to an unpopular war in the Middle East — the cultural factors that motivated young men to turn out for Republicans in 2024 may be outweighed by economic factors this time around.
Veteran Democratic strategist Dane Strother attributed the 2024 swing to the “bro sphere,” those podcasters who influenced large numbers of young men to support Trump and JD Vance as a correction to the extremism of the Democrats. Now, he says, their listeners are having second thoughts.
“They got caught up in the bro sphere, and as soon as they finished high-fiving they realized it’s $25 for a sandwich, chips, and a soda,” Strother told National Review. “And then they went to the gas station and said, ‘Holy cow!’”
Still, while some Democrats sense blood in the water, others in the party fear that candidates’ showing with young men could be a mirage that will lead Democrats to believe that they have better standing with the group than they actually do. These voices are encouraging their fellow Democrats not to learn the wrong lessons from the midterms.
“While Democrats should feel hopeful and motivated for 2026, an off-year election that will primarily be a referendum on Trump doesn’t really indicate that Democrats have solved all their problems,” Lucas Holtz, a senior political adviser at Third Way, a centrist Democratic group, told NR.
Two years ago, young men swung hard for the president. According to data from Tufts University, 56 percent of the group voted for Trump, four years after President Joe Biden likewise won 56 percent of the demographic in 2020.
Many attributed the 2024 loss to Democrats’ embrace of racial and sexual minorities and maligning of white men.
“A lot of our programming, a lot of our media, a lot of our outreach was really focused on everything but men,” Democratic consultant Christopher Hale told NR. “The affinity group obsession with the Democratic Party really hit its peak level shortly after the election of President Biden. And so, I think that there was a vacuum left open.”
In the aftermath of their loss, some Democrats consciously tried to rehabilitate the party’s image with men. At a Symposium on Young American Men in fall 2025, Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in his state when he was elected in 2024, bashed his party’s treatment of the group.
“It’s gone too far, [people saying] that if you are a masculine man, or if you’re a man in general, you are, by nature, somewhat toxic,” Gallego said on a panel. He also recounted a conversation with a fellow elected official who asked for his advice on how to win men over. Gallego suggested a Father’s Day event, but the official balked at the suggestion, fearing backlash, even though he would happily do a similar event for Mother’s Day.
“How is it that we’ve gotten into this mindset — and I say we, this is Democrats, just to be clear — that if somehow we cherish and understand and respect fathers that somehow it’s diminishing the status of mothers?” Gallego said at the event last year.
The Arizona senator spoke on a panel at the 2026 version of the symposium, which took place in Washington, D.C., last week, and he claimed that the party’s outreach toward men has improved since he leveled his criticism last year.
“Candidates have been doing much better,” Gallego said in response to a question from NR. “You actually have seen candidates, whether for office or potential 2028 presidential candidates, now putting out positions on men. Back in the day, I was the only one, and now it seems like everyone every week is coming out with a new position, new idea, which is great.”
For his part, Gallego this summer partnered with Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas to introduce a bill that would establish an office dedicated to men’s health, a move for which he received backlash from his left flank.
Delegate Josh Thomas, a Democrat in Virginia’s state House who is outspoken about men’s issues, noted the efforts of Governors Gavin Newsom of California and Wes Moore of Maryland, who since 2024 have taken initiatives centered on improving men’s well-being. “I do think that there’s been a seismic change in how prominent Democrats are talking about young men,” he told NR.
In the wake of such Democratic outreach, even Republican polling shows that Democrats are likely going to perform better among young men this cycle. In a Cygnal poll of men ages 18–30 conducted last month, those who are most likely to vote favored Democrats on the generic ballot by a 17-point margin. But Democrats’ lead was much smaller among the whole demographic. When likely and unlikely voters were added together, Democrats led by just three points.
Such a margin among likely voters could be due to the fact that left-leaning men are energized to depose a Republican trifecta, while right-leaning men are not so eager to try to preserve it. In short, Democrats’ performance among young men might look good in exit polls just because Republican voters in the group do not show up.
“I think to some extent [likely voters] are engaged because they’re Democratic,” Alex Tarascio, who conducted the poll, told NR. The Cygnal poll also indicated that both parties had a negative favorability rating among the demographic — Republicans just fared even worse.
Additionally, many of those who are staying home usually do not vote in midterms anyway. “Most of these people didn’t vote in ’22 or’ 18 or ’14, if they were old enough,” Cygnal CEO Brent Buchanan previously told NR of young men, specifically working class ones. “But that, to me, gets lost in the story. This is not some reliable voting bloc that is waffling off of the president and Republicans.”
Meanwhile, Third Way’s polling has an even better projection for Democrats, who lead Republicans among likely young male voters by 30 points on the generic ballot. Still, it also shows that Democratic respondents are much more likely to vote than Republican ones. The organization is not pretending that a good midterm performance means Democrats have rehabilitated their brand, and it is cognizant of the possibility that Republicans who stay home this year could show up again in the next presidential contest.
“Some of the recent polling that’s come out has shown Democrats underwater with young men, but so are Republicans,” Third Way’s Holtz said. “Republicans are just a little further underwater with young men.”
Ultimately, Democrats are warning their party not to celebrate too much if they perform well among young men this fall. They might have more work to do until 2028.
“One of the things that really scares me about my party is we tend to not learn well from victory,” said Hale, the political consultant. “Our brand is still in the toilet. And so I think we have to be very careful to not mistake winning in November with [being] on the pathway of winning in 2028.”