AVELLINO: Young men are now important voting bloc in elections
If you have read any of my articles ever, you would know I was not thrilled about Tuesday's elections.
It was a pretty bad night to be a Democrat. President-elect Donald J. Trump swept all seven swing states, heavily targeted by both campaigns as must-wins.
Republicans were also able to flip Democratic Senate seats in West Virginia, Ohio, Montana and Pennsylvania, giving them control of the chamber. And though the House is not officially called yet, Republicans are the heavy favorite to keep the chamber and deliver a Republican trifecta for the first time in eight years.
Things were pretty bad locally, too. New Jersey, which voted for President Joseph R. Biden by 16 points and was never in the conversation, voted for Harris by just more than five. Republicans were able to flip Morris County back into their column. Passaic County, home to Paterson, which had gone for Biden by more than 16 points in 2020, went to Trump by three. The South Jersey counties of Gloucester, Atlantic and Cumberland also flipped to the Republicans.
There are going to be lots of takeaways from these results and what they mean for our towns, state and country. One thing that we should focus on is the gender gap in this election. And it should get much more attention than it is now. Today, men are a voting bloc like they have not been in a while.
When I say voting bloc, I do not mean they vote homogeneously. Since 1988, it has been estimated that no less than 40 percent of the male vote has gone to the Democratic presidential candidate. In 2016, when Trump fired up a campaign full of machismo and sexism, his share of the male vote was only barely a majority.
Though exit polls are highly flawed, and the "good" data on voting demographics will not be out for months, I expect the gender gap between male and female voters to be similar. I also expect the male vote to still be roughly split 55-45 or 60-40 in favor of Republicans. That is not what I would call a unified voting bloc.
What I do mean is that there is now a concerted effort by both parties to go after men as a group of voters in a way I have not seen in my lifetime.
On the Republican side, Trump's team was certain they needed men to win. Republican strategists would say that men less than 40 had the softest views on Trump and could most easily be swayed to their camp.
These men are nominally apolitical and young and get their news from alternative media sources. Trump followed them to the Joe Rogan Experience (Rogan endorsed Trump), Adin Ross's and Logan Paul's streams (they also endorsed Trump) and many other platforms where the audiences are overwhelmingly young men.
There was sexism, of course. Trump attacked and accused Harris of using relationships to attain political power early in her career and mouthed a derogatory term for women to describe Harris during one of his last rallies. To the extent that male voters approved of this misogyny, it was in and of itself a tactic.
On the Democratic side, there were serious efforts to go after men explicitly as a group of voters with similar interests and beliefs. Part of this was in the appeal of Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) as Harris' vice presidential running mate. Walz, a former school teacher and football coach, would be seen giving interviews at football games and going pheasant hunting with online influencers. There was even some time to play Madden NFL with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
Both campaigns also sought to define masculinity in the race to 270 electoral votes. Surrogates like former President Barack Obama made outreach to Black men, at some points scolding them for considering voting Republican: "You're thinking about sitting out or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that's a sign of strength, because that's what being a man is ... That is not acceptable."
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk made similar comments about the relationship between one's masculinity and one's voting pattern on social media: "If you are a man in this country and you don't vote for Donald Trump, you're not a man." As a liberal man who would sooner vote for asbestos over Trump, I am used to this kind of anecdotal language.
But I would never expect it from organized campaigns, which is truly remarkable about this presidential campaign regarding gender dynamics. The exit polls we have, as flawed as they are, suggest that men voted for Trump over Harris. That is not surprising to me. Men of all ages tend to be more conservative for many reasons.
But more so than any other campaign I can think of in our lifetime, my brother, my guy friends and I are being reached out to in ways we never have before. In a lot of ways, we are not doing too hot. We are not doing nearly as well in school as women are, our earnings are stagnating, we have very few close friends and are at higher risk for drug addiction issues.
This is what I mean when I say men are a voting bloc: we face common issues in ways unique to other groups and seem more willing to vote based on how the parties reach out to us in both substance and style. And right now, as Tuesday showed, the Republican party is winning the war for men.
Noble Avellino is a senior in the School of Arts and Sciences majoring in economics and minoring in political science. Avellino’s column, “Noble’s Advocate,” runs on Mondays.
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