Last week PEW published a Party Affiliation Fact Sheet based on a big annual survey it does every year. What the fact sheet shows this year will not be a surprise to anyone who pays any attention to politics. Men, especially young men, have stepped away from the Democratic Party.
Today, Americans are about evenly split between the two parties: 46% identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, and 45% identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party. This balance of partisanship is similar to 2024, but the current near-even division marks a shift from the affiliation advantage the Democratic Party enjoyed a few years ago…
Men in all age groups are now more likely to align with the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. And, consistent with the overall gender gap, women in all age groups are less Republican than men of the same age.
The question of interest to Democrats is why? The Washington Post published a story today taking a stab at answering that.
Young men in swing states say the Democratic Party abandoned them, leaving them feeling helpless in providing for their families as prices rose and jobs evaporated. They felt no sympathy from the left, who they say brushed away their legitimate economic woes by citing their male privilege. They acknowledge historical patriarchy but assert that doesn’t make them invincible in a job market where graduate unemployment is concentrated among men…
“The belief has been that men have it easier in the labor market, and that’s been true to a large extent. But that notion is at odds with the reality right now” for many young men as manufacturing gives way to the information age, said Joshua Doss, senior research manager at HIT Strategies. “They talked about how they’re really watching the economy erode the types of jobs that they were told worked for them.”
While men increasingly feel under the gun, the response from Democrats has been a barely concealed sneer.
“There is complete misconception from Democrats and especially from progressives about young men moving away from the party, and takes from ‘It was all because of inflation’ to ‘The guys that supported Trump are incels and sexist,’” Holtz said. “It’s just a really terrible stereotype that has backlash effect on Democrats.”
The Post gives Barack Obama credit for being one of the few Democrats who seems to grasp that there is a problem.
“We don’t think about boys and just assume they’re going to be okay because they’ve been running the world and they’ve got all the advantages relative to the girls. And all of which has historically been true in all kinds of ways,” the former president said. “We’ve made that mistake sometimes in terms of our rhetoric. Where it’s like we’re constantly talking about what’s wrong with the boys, instead of what’s right with them.”
But my favorite part of the article is the response from a focus group participant who said “I think being a masculine leader is, like, outlawed in the Democratic Party right now.”
Everything the Democratic Party says about men these days is about how they are a problem. They are the reason for #MeToo and largely for Black Lives Matter. They are mansplainers and manspreaders. They are a problem at work for women colleagues and don’t do enough at home for their wives. They are toxic and incels and violent, etc.
It’s a pretty negative picture the left has built up with very little in terms of positive qualities worthy of praise or emulations. Men have turned on Democrats because Democrats have turned on men. Turning that around is going to take quite a while and it starts with finding something positive to say about men as a group that won’t set off the other constituencies that make up the Democratic Party. Best of luck with that. I struggle to think of a single positive thing they could say that wouldn’t anger some activists somewhere.
