aAs Democrats lick their wounds and prepare for Donald Trump’s return to the White House, we urge them to confront historic shifts in voting patterns that have seen Latinos, working-class people, and black men all move to the right. Commentators are increasingly calling for the party to do so. In 2024.
But perhaps the group raising the most serious alarm about the party’s future prospects is young people. In 2024, men between the ages of 18 and 29 will be the likely candidates for President Trump, giving Republicans a 14-point demographic victory and reversing decades of generational trends in which young people supported left-wing candidates.
Experts have variously attributed this to the backlash against the #MeToo movement, efforts to achieve gender equality, and the silos of entertainment and news sources, but Trump’s victory in the “manosphere” are just part of an unprecedented phenomenon around the world. The politics of a single generation has been divided across gender lines.
Votes are still being counted, but last week’s election opened a chasm between the political preferences of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29. Trump’s dramatic victory among young men was mirrored almost inversely by Kamala Harris’ 18-point victory among young women. Remarkably, that difference is more than twice the difference between men and women in the electorate overall. Harris won over women voters of all ages by just 7 points.
The United States is not unique in this regard. Political polarization between men and women is increasing among young people around the world. In South Korea’s 2022 presidential election, the difference in voting preferences between men and women was only a few points in all age groups except those aged 18 to 29.
Among Gen Zers, there was a nearly 25-point difference in voting for the conservative-leaning People Power Party.
The same pattern plays out elsewhere. Almost twice as many young women voted for the Green Party in the 2024 UK general election (23% vs. 12%). Conversely, young men were more likely to vote for Nigel Farage’s Reform Britain (12% vs. 6%). Meanwhile, in Germany, a sample of recent surveys shows that men aged 18 to 29 are twice as likely to vote for the far-right AfD as women in the same age group.
Despite a worse-than-expected result in Poland’s 2023 general election, the far-right League, which opposes compulsory vaccinations, mass immigration, and is skeptical of the climate crisis, has a majority of 18-29 voters. It gained the strongest support among young people. He was a man.
The party leadership has adopted a policy of blatant misogyny, with one prominent party member, Janusz Colwijn-Mikke, saying after the election that “women should not have the right to vote.”
Echo chambers and the erosion of shared experiences
Dr Alice Evans, senior lecturer in the social sciences of development at King’s College, says the backlash against gender equality is one of the universal factors driving polarization between young men and women around the world.
“There is a growing concern among young men that DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) has gone too far,” she says, adding that “women’s gains are being gained at the expense of women. There is also the question of whether this is the case,” he added.
A 2024 Ipsos study confirms this. Researchers, who took samples from around the world including Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Turkey, found that 18- to 29-year-olds have the greatest disagreement between men and women when it comes to gender equality.
10% of baby boomer women and 11% of baby boomer men agreed that men who stay home to take care of their children are unmanly. However, there was an 11-point difference in opinion among Gen Z, with 31% of men and 20% of women.
According to some polls, this phenomenon is as much a shift of women to the left as it is a shift of men to the right. In September, Gallup polled U.S. adults under 30 and found that women lean to the left on many issues.
When it comes to issues like the environment, gun control, and access to abortion, the gap between Gen Z men’s and women’s views is overwhelming.
This pattern is repeated in surveys around the world, showing a historical gap in the attitudes of young men and women. The question is why.
“It’s the social media filter bubble and cultural entrepreneurs,” says Evans, who has written extensively on the issue.
Gen Z is growing up in a fragmented media environment that undermines shared cultural experiences. Ms. Evans cites an example from her own childhood in England. “We only had four TV channels and all our friends were just watching BBC News or The Simpsons or Friends. There was very little choice so we all watched the same thing. .”
But today, media is consumed through smartphones, with nearly endless options across traditional platforms as well as new services like Netflix, YouTube, and TikTok.
“People can choose their own preferences, and then a company’s algorithm kicks in to keep you hooked. ,” Evans says.
Evans says it’s within this echo chamber that charismatic entrepreneurs thrive.
Joe Rogan is one of the most popular podcasters on the planet, with his shows topping the charts in the US as well as Australia, the UK and Canada, but according to YouGov, his audience More than 80% are men.
“When you consume this media and listen to these perspectives, whether it’s Joe Rogan or anyone else, you start to trust them,” Evans says.
Donald Trump faced criticism for the apparently narrow focus of his campaign appearances, eschewing much traditional media for interviews on a podcast hosted by Logan, Logan Paul and Theo Fung. But experts say it may have been a strategy to help him capture voters traditionally avoided by right-wing politicians.
“Young people are trying to understand their place in a rapidly evolving society,” Daniel Cox of the American Enterprise Institute told the BBC. “These are very real concerns, and there’s a sense that no one in the political world is supporting them.”
Before the 2024 US election, YouTuber and video game streamer Hasan Doan Piker warned that Democrats were lagging behind Republicans in terms of dominating these online spaces.
“If you’re a man under 30 and have a hobby, whether it’s playing video games, exercising, listening to history podcasts, every aspect of it is controlled by the center-right. …all the way to the pro-Trump right,” he said on the Pod Save America podcast.
Spatial silos, the decline of shared experiences, and resentment over commitments to gender equality all create huge and intractable problems that extend beyond the most recent election cycle.
Birth rates are skyrocketing around the world, creating major problems for economies as diverse as South Korea, Sweden, and Australia. Governments around the world are launching multi-pronged efforts to encourage couples to have children, with policies targeting childcare costs and housing shortages.
Experts say the decline in sociability between boys and girls starts at school. According to the Japan Association for Sexual Education, only one in five boys have had their first kiss in high school, the lowest number since the association conducted its first survey of young people’s sexual behavior in 1974. are.
But the fight against this growing isolation needs to begin in schools, says Evans. It may feel like a drop in the ocean, but banning phones in schools and investing in local youth centers could help turn the tide of polarization.
“Mobile phones compete with each other for personal contact,” Evans says, but the more young people spend time with, befriend and develop relationships with members of the opposite sex, the more they realize how much more they have. You’ll start to notice what you have in common. ”
