Donald Trump appears to be losing his grip on a group of voters who were key to his 2024 victory: young men. A new survey from the Democratic-led project Speaking with American Men shows that only 46% of the demographic approves of the president, a 10-point drop from last spring.
MS NOW political contributor John Della Volpe, who spearheaded the survey, walked through the results on Saturday’s “The Weekend: Primetime.” Young men are a “significant reason why Trump is in the White House today,” Della Volpe said, but one year into his second term, it appears those voters — ages 16 to 29 — could be having buyer’s remorse.
He said the new poll showed that 25% of young men who voted for Trump in 2024 now say that if they had to do it over again, they wouldn’t cast their ballot for him.
“What we found was young men chose Trump a year ago for a basic reason: for some more economic stability in their life,” said Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. “Now, a year later, they’re reassessing not whether they should continue to be involved in politics, but whether they should continue to support Donald Trump, given their economic situation today.”
“Breitbart said a generation ago that politics is downstream of culture,” he added. “What this report indicates is politics is downstream of experience — the day-to-day lived experience that millions of young men are having today. And when they look at that, it’s not about ideology — it’s about who’s delivering.”
Della Volpe said only 27% of respondents said Trump is “delivering for people” like them, adding, “When they look back, they actually remember that Barack Obama did deliver. They delivered health care, specifically to younger people, and that is not forgotten by younger people, especially in this era.”
The polling expert also spoke about the influence of the manosphere, which has been credited with helping Trump retake office: “Donald Trump and the modern machine spent tens of millions of dollars engaging with influencers. … But the reality is that almost 9 out of 10 young men are carrying stress on their shoulders on a regular basis; 77%, nearly 4 in 5 young men, say they feel like they’re by themselves in this world, that no one has their back.
“And they thought for a moment, because Joe Rogan and Theo Von and a lot of those other influences told young people that he [Trump] would have their back, that he was listening. But younger men in particular, they’re not listening to that. Those influencers aren’t the ones who are paying their bills. They’re not the ones who are paying their rent, right? Or helping them think through the changes that AI will have on their lives and their livelihood.”
Della Volpe said young men are “looking for leaders,” telling Democrats that they have a “significant opportunity” to “win this cohort back in the midterm elections.”
You can watch Della Volpe’s full analysis of the poll in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.