Will young men rock the US presidential election?

Sep 6

Young men changed the outcome of the 2022 presidential election in South Korea, in part due to moving from the left politically to the right in rejection of the #MeToo movement, gender quotas for top officials and other progressive developments.

There are signs that similar views are common outside South Korea. A survey of 22,208 adults in 32 countries last year found that in the US 46% of men agreed somewhat or strongly that "We have gone so far in promoting women's equality that we are discriminating against men". Younger men in the survey tended to agree with the statement even more than older men. So it’s clear that many men feel they are being discriminated against, even if it confuses those who see men as privileged and not discriminated against at all.

Is it possible that this sense of being discriminated against will, like in South Korea, influence the voting of young men in the US presidential election in November 2024? According to viewpoints expressed on social media and the mainstream media, many people seem to think so, especially if disillusioned young male voters actually make the effort to vote.

The ‘gender divergence’ narrative, proposed by Lecturer in International Development Dr Alice Evans, suggests that although young women have moved to the left politically, young men have moved to the right. This divergence of views means that, as John Burn-Murdoch put it, “Gen Z is two generations, not one”. This has implications for the upcoming US presidential election, where the Democrats are seen as the party for women rather than men. An article by CNN, written shortly before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, concluded “Biden’s best hope of avoiding a catastrophic decline in his youth support is that the number of young women Trump repels exceeds the number of young men he attracts.” No doubt Biden’s replacement with Kamala Harris will go some way to address that concern.

I’m a psychologist, not a political pundit or predictor of election results or voter turnout, so don’t judge me too harshly for missing some of the nuances of this topic, or for using terms like ‘left-leaning’ too loosely, or for not citing a particular poll. It’s not my area of expertise at all, but recent elections and, increasingly, everyday politics in the US, UK and other Western countries have been such a source of turmoil, anger and stress for people that it’s impossible for anyone interested in mental health not to notice and wonder what on Earth is going on.

There appears to be an emerging fear that if young men turn out to vote in this election, the Republican party will win. With the US election so soon, hype around the notion of right-leaning young men is not hard to find. But realistically, how much of a headache is the young male vote likely to be for the Democrats?

A poll by ABC News / Ipsos published in Sept 2024 found “Harris leads by 13 points among women, 54-41 percent, while it’s Trump +5 points among men, 51-46 percent”. This adds up to an 18-point gender gap, which is “in line with recent elections, an average of 19 points in exit polls since 1996.” This poll doesn’t break down the data by age, but a poll by Pew Research conducted in August 2023 does. For registered voters of all ages, 52% of men favour the Republican Party and 46% favour the Democratic Party. In contrast, 51% of women favour the Democratic Party, and 44% favour the Republican Party. No surprises so far and similar to the ABC News / Ipsos poll, but in regards to younger voters (aged 18-29), 62% of men and 65% of women align with the Democrats. [Edit: A Pew poll published in August 2024 found Trump had 31% support from young men and 30% from young women, whereas Harris had 55% from young men and 58% from young women]. Figure 1 shows that younger voters of both sexes lean more to the political left than do older voters.

***Figure 1. Voting preferences in the US by age and gender.*** ***Poll by Pew Research*** ***conducted in August 2023, published April 2024***

“Young men in the US are mostly left-leaning […] This pattern for young men is not dissimilar to recent data from the UK, where the left-leaning Labour party won the general election in July 2024.”

Young men in the US are mostly left-leaning, which is surprising given fears expressed in the media about young men voting Republican. In fact there is a much bigger effect of age than sex on political orientation. This pattern for young men is not dissimilar to recent data from the UK, where the left-leaning Labour party won the general election in July 2024. In the last few elections in the UK, age has been the biggest predictor of voting preference, with younger voters of both sexes more likely to vote Labour and older voters for the right-leaning Conservative Party. However voting options are less binary in the UK than the US, allowing us to see more into what issues people are voting for (see Figure 2).

***Figure 2. Voting behaviour in the UK 2024 general election by age and gender. Graph from*** ***YouGov***.

Although in the 18-24 age group men and women show similar support for Labour (40% men, 42% women), the biggest gender gap was regarding support the Green Party (12% men, 23% women), and a smaller gender gap for the right leaning Reform Party (12% men, 6% women). Respectively, these indicate the importance of green issues to young women and the importance of national sovereignty to young men. This shows that, as might be expected, the tilt to the left is not just about a single party, but about left-leaning issues and parties in general. Even if the five different UK political parties in Figure 2 are combined into a binary option (Labour + Lib Dem + Green Vs Reform + Conservative) support in the youngest voting group for the combined left would be 68% men and 81% women. Compared to young men and women in the US (Figure 1), young women in the UK are further left but young men are just as left-leaning as men in the US, though it is possible that the slight difference in the age groupings - 18-29 in the US data and 18-24 in the UK - might contribute to the apparent differences between the countries.

More noticeable than any sex differences in the UK election data was the impact of education: those with a university degree were more inclined to the left than those with lower levels of education. This may well reflect the fact that universities have become increasingly left-leaning and woke - especially in psychology and the social sciences - which is likely to influence the views of students. It is notable too that these days most college graduates are female. This has been overwhelmingly true in psychology for years, as shown by enrolment figures for postgraduate psychology degrees.

But if young men don’t turn out to vote, as some people have suggested, the whole issue of political leaning is moot. Some causes of non-voting are fairly obvious, such as not being able to get time off work to vote, but there is a more subtle point here, related to the fact that the data in Figure 1 is from an opinion survey of registered voters, and the data from Figure 2 is from actual turnout data. As with many things in life, people don’t always do what they say they will do. The intention-behaviour gap is well known in psychology, but when it comes to voting does the gap impact men and women to the same degree, and what might cause any sex difference? One interesting study assessed the gender gap in voter turnout according to survey data versus official electoral figures in 73 elections between 1996 to 2016, across 26 countries. The study found that in surveys men typically report higher turnout, but in official electoral figures around 2-3% more women turn out to vote than men do, even taking into account that in many countries women make up around 51% of the population. Although the US was not one of the countries in the study, it is not inconceivable that the findings generalise to the US.

Looking at actual voter turnout data from all US elections between 1996 and 2020, The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) found more women than men in the 18-24 age group vote (29.7 vs 25.3%), whereas more men than women in the 75+ age group vote (67.3 vs 63.6%). Note that in the older group there are more women than men (due to women living longer), which impacts the absolute difference in numbers of women voting compared to men, but nonetheless young men and women are about half as likely to vote as the elderly, and the non-voter rate represents a 4 or 5% shortfall in votes from young men compared to young women.

Taking those two studies into account, would a difference of as little as 2-5% of young men make much difference to the outcome of the election? There are around 22 million young men of voting age in the US, and 2-5% perhaps wouldn’t be a decisive number of votes. You can do the math and make a prediction, but you never know until the votes are in, and even then you might not know for sure, especially with the ongoing fierce arguments about the quality of the voting system in the US today.

So whoever wins the election, heated arguments are sure to ensue, breaking friendships and dividing families. Increasingly the US looks like a married couple heading towards a messy divorce, which would be a disaster. William J Dougherty is a marriage and family therapist who, exasperated by the animosity the relationship between Republicans and Democrats in the run up to the 2016 US presidential election, decided to apply his marriage therapy skills to gain some sort of reconciliation between the two sides. As Dougherty commented: “We tried divorce once (see The Civil War) and we are still fighting a custody battle for the American soul”. One thing is sure about the outcome of the election: someone will lose. Perhaps the victors won’t care, but it would be a national tragedy if the losing side were treated as badly as the losing side in many divorce cases, which leaves everyone unhappy, and even suicidal.

“…the ‘gender divergence’ narrative is fanning the moral panic about young men being led astray by online influencers, which never seems to get to the root of what exactly is missing from their lives that they find in these influencers.”

In any case, having looked briefly into the potential of young men rocking the US vote, my conclusion is that the case is overstated. Young men may be a little more right-leaning than young women but they are still mostly left-leaning, so if the Democrats lose, don’t blame young men. Moreover, it seems to me the ‘gender divergence’ narrative is fanning the moral panic about young men being led astray by online influencers, which never seems to get to the root of what exactly is missing from their lives that they find in these influencers. Mostly I am concerned that a huge amount of time and resources is being invested in fears about schoolboys falling prey to misogynistic online influencers, because these fears are being blown out of proportion and are creating an image of boys as monsters. This toxic narrative is quite possibly damaging the mental wellbeing of men and boys. We know that many men already feel discriminated against just for being men, so it hardly seems a good idea for the media to keep hammering the idea home. The fact that there is clear evidence of bias against men would not be surprising to lots of men and boys, though evidence of this kind is invariably overlooked by those most vocal about gender inequality i.e. the mainstream media, academia and government. If men and boys are telling us they feel discriminated against, why don’t we just ask them why, and try to listen to their answers with an open mind?

It seems inevitable there will be lots of unhappy people in the US after November 5th no matter which side wins, so is it even worth voting? Each person will have a different answer to that, but one answer is that whatever way people vote, they should be aware of what they are voting for and the impact government policies will have on them and others. Find out what the policies of each candidate are (Republican, Democrat or independent), learn about their criticisms of each other’s positions, and slowly make up your mind. Don’t vote based on what others expect you to do or pressure you to do – vote for someone if you have decided it’s the best choice. Remember of course that if you end up with a president you don’t like, but you didn’t vote, you have four years to dwell on what might have been. Here’s instructions on how to vote - be sure to look at your options to vote before voting day (November 5th). And if your side loses, don’t get mad or sad – get busy thinking how you can improve your world in a positive way.

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