Dem
51
GOP
49
Ronald Brownstein has an interesting piece on the gender gap among young voters. Democrats are counting on young voters to be motivated to vote on the abortion issue. That will probably work with young women, but there is some evidence that it will not work as well with young men. There are several reasons.
First, young men can't become pregnant so some of them don't see abortion as terribly important. To them it is a "women's issue." Second, for men the economy may loom larger, especially jobs, wages, and inflation. Third, some young men hear Donald Trump say "Make America Great Again," and think about what they have heard about the 1950s, when men gave the orders and women followed them. That doesn't sound so bad to them. For some voters, restoring old gender and racial hierarchies doesn't sound so bad at all.
There is some data to back that up. In a Pew poll, 40% of male Trump voters under 50 believe that women's gains in society have come at the expense of men. For example, if an organization explicitly tries to hire more women, that means it will hire fewer men. Isn't that discrimination against men? Many of these voters think so.
A recent study suggests the growing gender gap between young men and young women appears to be international. Young men everywhere are becoming more conservative while young women are not. It could be that men everywhere see women's gains as men's losses and would be pleased to go back to the old days.
Another survey of men 18-29 showed that slightly more than half identified as liberal rather than conservative. Among young women, three times as many identified as liberal rather than conservative. Young men were 15 points more likely than women to support building a wall on the Mexican border, 12 points more likely to say that same-sex relationships are morally wrong, and 11 points more likely to say that Israel's actions in Gaza are justified due to the Oct. 7 attack.
These differences explain why young men are increasingly voting Republican while young women are not. In the survey, Democrats have a 3-point advantage in party identification among young men (down from 22 points in 2020). Among young women, the Democrats' advantage is 26 points.
The good news for the Democrats is that young women turned out at a far higher rate than young men in 2020. In fact, the turnout gap was greater for the 18-29 year olds than for any other age range. Other data from the survey showed that the top issue for young men was the economy, but for young women it was abortion. Also a factor is Donald Trump's belligerent style. Some young men see him as "strong." Young women see him as "chaotic, crazy, and divisive." On many social media channels, Trump is portrayed more positively than Biden and young people get much more of their news from social media than older people do.
One other thing worth pointing out: A 19-point swing is rather a lot for one election cycle, especially when both major-party candidates are the same. So, it's possible either that polls of the young, male American electorate might be overstating the effect, either due to modeling issues, or some kinds of young men not responding to pollsters, or that some young men who are not currently backing a party/candidate will eventually come home to the Democrats. (V)