Democrats are grappling with how to win back young male voters, fearful that without a course correction the party will cede more ground to Republicans heading into 2026 and 2028.
A report released this month by the Democratic data firm Catalist found the party saw a 9-point drop in support among men aged 18 to 29 years old between 2020 and 2024, including substantial drops among young men of color.
Members of the party say that Democrats need to shore up their identity among the key demographic and better address their economic anxieties, among other prescriptions, amid concerns the party could further backslide with the voting bloc.
“The fact that we wish-cast it and didn’t actually think about actively how to help them and talk to them eventually got us, got the Democrats, to the point where they are now,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) told The Hill in an interview, referring to how many in the party were trying to paint a rosier picture about the economy and how men were feeling despite the reality.
Democrats are now advocating for a host of solutions on how to win back the voting bloc, an issue noted in detail in the recent Catalist report.
The Democratic data firm reported a 17-point gender gap among voters aged 18 to 29 years old who supported the party in the 2024 election, compared with 10 points for the same age cohort in 2020 and 13 points in 2016.
In particular, the party saw a drop-off among young men of color. The firm noted there was a 16-point decline in support nationally among Latino men aged 18 to 29 years old between 2020 and 2024, while there was a 10-point decline in support nationally among Black men of that age cohort between 2020 and 2024.
“Start with a commitment to listening and not lecturing,” said John Della Volpe, who serves as the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics and did polling for former President Biden’s 2020 campaign.
“Young men feel like they’re isolated on an island, that they don’t feel like anyone has their back,” Della Volpe said. This sense of isolation leads young men to “feel less secure about themselves … and their own place in the world.”
Della Volpe said young people are striving to be financially independent so that they don’t need to rely on their families or peers for support.
The Democratic pollster believed that the message the party should communicate ahead of the midterms is: “I hear you, OK, and the chaos being sown in your community, in your state, in the country and around the world, is not a pathway for you to achieve what you want to achieve.”
Others say the solution should comprise a mix of messaging and policy.
“A lot of it has to be a very strong economic message of, like, attainment, like literally helping these guys become successful and rich,” said Gallego, who outperformed former Vice President Kamala Harris among Hispanic and Latino men and young men broadly in Arizona.
“And don’t be afraid to say … ‘We want you to be successful and rich,’” he added, noting that could entail supportive tax policies and supporting starting businesses.
He pointed to legislation introduced by Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), for example, that would raise the startup tax deduction from $5,000 to $50,000 for small businesses.
Experts are quick to note that the backslide among young men isn’t happening in a vacuum. In addition to the current economics at play, young men are lonelier and have significantly higher suicide rates than their female counterparts.
Research released last week from Gallup found that 25 percent of U.S. men aged 18 to 34 years old reported feeling loneliness a lot of the day before, compared with 18 percent of U.S. women in the same age group.
Similar to the perennial frustrations voiced among voters of color who feel the Democratic Party only courts them just months before an election, young men feel like their votes have been taken for granted, too.
“A lot of the messaging doesn’t feel genuine and especially … it doesn’t help when, you know, you only come around during election season,” said Georgia state Rep. Bryce Berry (D), a 23-year-old, first-term state lawmaker who flipped a Republican seat in November.
Berry said that engaging with young men doesn’t need to revolve around typically masculine things — but it should feel authentic.
“Don’t listen to consultants that say, you know, ‘You have to only talk about sports and cars and this, that and the other to reach … young men,’” he said. “Just be real. Just be you.”
As the party grapples with how to reset after the election, some groups have already started devising their own plans on how to win back young men.
Joe Jacobson, founder of the Democratic super PAC Progress Action Fund — whose eyebrow-raising ads have included a generic Republican congressman intruding in people’s personal lives — said his group is looking to raise $25 million ahead of the midterms for a campaign that will focus on young men.
“We want to be targeting young men on connected TV, streaming services and also YouTube-style ads, but on websites,” Jacobson said.
Other Democrats have been hoping to find their liberal version of a Joe Rogan personality, hearkening back to Trump’s appearance on the podcaster’s show during the 2024 election. Yet that idea has also attracted skepticism and some scorn.
“I think that for a lot of Democrats, they think again, you can just pull Joe Rogan out of [a] box and have him talk about … Democratic talking points and still get that audience. That’s simply not going to happen,” said Santiago Mayer, 23, the executive director of Voters of Tomorrow.
“You have to invest in building a network of creators who are not explicitly political, who are not always in tune to the party line, who … can and do talk about things other than Democratic politics,” Santiago said.
