A debate has emerged over whether the Democrats need to change their message, or just how they’re delivering it.
Democrats are scrambling to figure out why Gen Z men voted overwhelmingly for President Trump in 2024, breaking the party’s nearly four-decade win streak with young men.
Party strategists are pouring $20 million in the Speaking with American Men (SAM) project to explore how they can reach male voters. Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee is producing a “postelection review,” groups such as the Progress Action Fund have created plans to target young men, and progressive media figures are buzzing about the need for a left-wing podcast sphere able to compete with Joe Rogan and his comedian friends.
As Democratic consultants, progressive activists, and media figures grasp about for a strategy to reach alienated voters decades their junior, National Review spoke with the campus activists who interact every day with the illusive young American male.
For some of those campus leaders, it’s not what Democrats have done wrong to lose the young male vote, but what amoral, cynical Republicans have done right.
The GOP has “encouraged young men to punch down, and blame their lot [in] life on immigrants, LGBTQ individuals and the women who seem to be outpacing them,” College Democrats of America president Sunjay Muralitharan said.
Muralitharan predicts the GOP’s gains will be short-lived.
“Such a message caused a temporary electoral shift, one that will inevitably flip when disillusioned young men realize which party actually improves their lot in life.”
While the trend Muralitharan describes was made visible with Trump’s election in 2024, it’s not new: American men have been shifting to the right for about ten years. The shift isn’t confined to the U.S. either: Young voters in Europe have also become more conservative. To further complicate Muralitharan’s “punching down” theory, the drop in Democratic Party support among Black and Latino men and working class men has been especially pronounced.
So what is going on?
Jack Howard, president of the California College Democrats, believes these men are drawn to the Republicans’ faux machismo.
“We need to break the illusion that Democrats are weak and Republicans are strong,” he told NR, “There is nothing strong about supporting a president who gets off on arbitrary belittlement and greed, and has no substance beyond that. Democrats need to return to pursuing substantive policies that have clear, simple, material returns.”
Muralitharan argues that the party is pursuing exactly those policies. Democrats, he said, “empower young men to achieve what they deeply desire: becoming successful providers for themselves and their families.”
The party has a history of supporting men through policies such as “making homes more affordable with housing rebates, keeping grocery prices low through cracking down on price gouging or creating well-paying blue collar jobs with the IRA,” Muralitharan argued.
So, either the message isn’t getting through to young men or it is, and they just don’t like what the Democrats are offering. Post-election polling suggests it’s the latter: Young men increasingly see the Democrats — with their focus on providing a social safety net for the poor — as overly risk averse and even hostile to competition.
Democrats are now viewed as the party that polices speech and behavior, while Republicans are seen as more approachable. Republican men are nearly twice as likely as Democratic men to see themselves as “highly masculine.” Moreover, Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to say people in the U.S. place too much value on men who are confident, assertive, risk-taking, or physically strong.
“We’re tired of being told we’re to blame for everything that’s wrong with society,” said JT Marshburn, chairman of the College Republican National Committee.
For some young activists, like Rishita Nossam, communications director for the High School Democrats of America, Democrats aren’t consistently pushing their message through the right channels.
Democrats need to reach out to men in a “meaningful” rather than “performative” way, she said.
“The party must maintain consistency and commitment so young men see that Democrats are willing and able to appeal to their concerns.”
Campus Democrats may have something to learn from their political opponents.
Last election cycle, GOP campus activists showed themselves to be quite adept at going to the places young men congregate and extending a hand to them.
College Republicans, Marshburn said, “did a lot of solid work to win young men for Trump like creating a fraternity council that we plugged into the Trump campaign and developed programming targeted toward men like tailgates.”
A group of University of North Carolina fraternity brothers who gained national attention for raising an American flag during the anti-Israel encampments spoke at the Republican convention last year, and groups such as Turning Point specifically targeted fraternity members in the November election.
“We helped create a social atmosphere that welcomed everyone, and men in particular connected with the message of conservatism,” Marshburn concluded.
Cody Miller, vice chairman of the National Federation of College Republicans, said young men increasingly believe in the importance of “faith and family,” but the left “obstructs that.”
Gen Z men are more likely to regularly attend religious services than millennial men, with many young people turning to religion for community after the pandemic lockdowns. This is a worldwide phenomenon, as church attendance has quadrupled among Gen Zers in the U.K., and the Catholic Church in France baptized more adults in 2025 than it has in the last 20 years.
Miller believes College Republicans have been able to reach male students because their chapters are “a place where young men can finally be themselves on college campuses that alienate them.” He said Gen Z men need “a strong sense of community and belonging.” However, the left focuses too much on “privilege” and tells men they have “an inherent advantage that never actually appears.”