WHEN IT comes to making a show of manliness, few politicians can match Donald Trump. One day he is swaggering into a cage-fighting stadium to the tune of Kid Rock’s “American Badass”. Another day he is shrugging off a third assassination attempt with the observation that only the “most impactful” presidents attract would-be assassins.
Voters have long thought of Republicans as the “daddy” party (strong on defence, tough on crime) and the Democrats as more maternal (nurturing the needy, fussing about mean words). Asked which is more the party of men, Americans are almost seven times likelier to say “Republicans” than “Democrats”.
Mr Trump has added to this vibe with braggadocious appeals to the male id. On social media he portrays himself as dominant, victorious and humorously transgressive. His administration’s posts blend real footage from the war in Iran with images from video games. In his three runs for office, Mr Trump has always won the male vote and always won overall when his opponent was a woman. A study by Dan Cassino of Fairleigh Dickinson University found that, after voting for Trump in 2024, men actually reported feeling more masculine.
Yet his macho magic appears to be fading, especially among young men. In 2024 49% of men aged 18-29 voted for him. Now only 28% approve of him, finds a Harvard/IOP poll. Virile vibes are all very well, but young men have practical concerns, too. They often want to find a job, buy a home, attract a partner and raise a family. This is especially true of young men who voted for Mr Trump; in an NBC poll they ranked “having children” as their top life goal. (Young women who voted for Kamala Harris ranked it second-last out of 13 options.)
The trouble is, homes and families cost money. Mr Trump said he would “make America affordable again” by ending inflation and even making prices fall. Yet his tariffs and war in Iran have had the opposite effect. “Everything’s expensive,” complains Miguel Martinez, a 21-year-old restaurant worker in Flowery Branch, Georgia. “You can’t even go inside the grocery store right now and not spend $80.”
Mr Martinez works two jobs and lives with his parents. He wants to get a place of his own, but prices are “crazy”. He sees memes online about the older generation paying “basically nothing for a house”, which does nothing for his mood. He voted for Mr Trump in 2024, but come the midterms in November, he won’t be pulling the lever for anyone.
Souring on Mr Trump need not imply loving the Democrats. On the contrary, many young men feel spurned by them. For years, the party’s message to them sounded like “hey, the future is not you,” laments Josh Thomas, a Democratic state lawmaker in Virginia. Democrats can seem eager to talk about the problems men cause, but not the ones they face. “There’s kind of a hesitancy for some Democrats to campaign on those issues, because they don’t want to appear as, like, a dude or a bro,” says a Democratic student in Charlottesville, Virginia. Republicans, by contrast, “have the ability to say out loud what a lot of young men [would say] behind closed doors”.
A majority of Americans (54%) think anti-male bias is a problem in the Democratic Party, finds an Economist/YouGov poll. Another poll finds that Democrats are five times likelier than Republicans (26% to 5%) to admit to having an unfavourable view of men in general.
Young men have become swing voters. In the Harvard/IOP poll, 33% say they will back a Democrat in November, 25% will back a Republican and a whopping 38% say they don’t know or won’t vote. Neither party strikes the right note with them, says Richard Reeves of the American Institute for Boys and Men, an NGO. Republicans speak as if there is only one valid life path: get a job, get married, have kids. Democrats sometimes dismiss young men who aspire to these traditional markers of adulthood as reactionaries who “just want tradwives”. But “I don’t see the evidence for that,” says Mr Reeves. “Most young men don’t want to go back the 1950s. They don’t expect to be the patriarch. But they recognise that fatherhood gives them a purpose, and they want to be needed.”
Several Democrats, including some with presidential aspirations, are explicitly trying to win over young men. This usually involves two steps. First, acknowledge that men have problems. “It’s glaringly clear that we have ignored young men and boys in our society,” says Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland.
Then, try to help. Last year Governor Gavin Newsom in California launched an initiative to grapple with young male difficulties in school, mental health and job-seeking. In October Virginia unveiled plans for a commission for boys and men, pushed by Mr Thomas. In December Mr Moore announced a push to help boys do better in school.
A hefty Afghanistan veteran, Mr Moore plays up the perils of his own boyhood: “I was raised by an immigrant single mother, you know; I had handcuffs on my wrist by the time I was 11.” (He was arrested for spraying graffiti.) He argues that male role models matter. “My mom was an angel, but she couldn’t teach me how to be a man,” he says. So he is hiring more male teachers, of whom there are far too few.
Rahm Emanuel, a former mayor of Chicago, has linked male despondency to high housing costs. He has a point, argues Gabrielle Penrose of Boston College. The scarcity of homes raises the “price of independence”. It prompts young men (and a smaller number of young women) to live with their parents, rather than where the jobs are.
Ms Penrose found that a 10% increase in local rents increases the likelihood that non-college-educated men live with their parents by about 1.1 percentage points—and was associated with a 0.5 percentage-point decline in labour force participation. She estimates that higher housing costs could explain a third of the fall in employment among non-college-educated men since 2000.
Homes are expensive partly because of red tape. In many cities, most land is zoned for single-family homes. That is, you cannot build flats on it. Other rules mandate large backyards, off-street parking and countless other things that drive up costs. If zoning rules all over America were like those in the least stringent quarter of cities, two-thirds of the national housing shortfall would disappear, estimates Goldman Sachs, a bank.
Thus, housing deregulation could help unblock the path to adulthood. It might even win the gratitude of young male voters, who are more likely than young women to see housing as an “urgent crisis”. However, it is routinely stymied by the old, who are far likelier to vote than the young. In February a bill to allow more “housing near jobs” passed Virginia’s legislature, but died before reaching the governor’s desk.
For young men who remain stuck in their parents’ basements, at least there is plenty of masculine entertainment. In June, Mr Trump will celebrate 250 years of America and his own 80th birthday with cage fighting on the White House lawn.
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