They’re a group that previous presidential candidates may have overlooked.
Now, young men have emerged as a voting bloc that could potentially swing an election expected to see a razor-thin margin of victory for the candidate who wins.
And so far, surveys are showing younger men increasingly drifting toward Donald Trump and Republicans.
An NBC News poll last week found a nearly even Trump-Harris split among men ages 30 or younger.
That comes as the share of young men who identify as registered Democrats has dropped by 7 percentage points since the spring of 2020, according to data from a national survey conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, while those identifying as Republicans have increased by the same amount, for a net shift of 14 points in four years.
The trend has been especially pronounced among young men of color. A poll published this month from the University of Chicago’s GenForward Survey found one-quarter of young Black men now support Trump — a sea change from 2020, when Black men of all ages went for President Joe Biden by a nearly 9-to-1 margin. Among young Latino men, 44% said they were backing Trump, up from 38% in 2020.
The reasons for the apparent rightward drift of young men are mixed. There’s evidence that younger men today are more prone to be lonely, single and less well educated. Adding to the complexity is that younger men have actually experienced solid economic gains, at least on paper, during the Biden administration.
Among men ages 25-54, known as prime-age individuals, the labor force participation rate, or the percentage of the population either with jobs or looking for work, has climbed back to 90%, the level it had reached prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
That recovery has occurred among men who were born in the U.S. — who traditionally lag behind foreign-born men in employment measures — and among U.S.-born men who do not have a college degree. Those outcomes challenge arguments put forward by Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, that immigrants have been taking away jobs from Americans.
In the University of Chicago GenForward poll, young men named “economic growth” as their No. 1 issue, with inflation not far behind. Notably, unemployment and poverty did not figure significantly.
Matt Nelsen, a researcher with the GenForward Survey, told NBC News that a follow-up focus group conducted among Black men revealed a sharp divide between individuals with and without college degrees.
Those without one, he said, felt that despite a generally more favorable jobs picture, the opportunities currently available were not providing adequate compensation to keep up with the rising cost of living that has occurred in the pandemic era.
“Even when their incomes have increased, the cost of groceries or the cost of housing makes it feel like they don’t think they can get ahead,” Nelsen said.
Vice President Kamala Harris has sought to address these concerns with a policy paper, titled “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men,” that puts forward proposals including forgivable loans and increased job and skills training. At the same time, she has proposed further curbing inflation by capping grocery prices and rent increases.
Yet some of these men were nevertheless more inclined to support Trump, Nelsen said, in part due to concerns about immigration.
As these voters see it, Democratic policymakers have been more focused on supporting immigrants than them, despite years of evidence to the contrary, Nelsen said.
“Some said that even though African Americans had been consistent voters for Democrats for generations, Democrats have not lived up to their central promises,” Nelsen said, adding that alongside economic concerns among these voters is the idea that Democrats are providing more resources to immigrant groups than to Americans.
“There’s disinformation and misinformation baked into that, but that makes Trump appealing to young men. And Trump has emphasized the economy and immigration,” Nelsen said.
This perception is grounded in the growing divide between voters with and without college degrees. Possessing a bachelor’s degree continues to correlate with a more positive outlook on the economy and country as a whole — and thus greater support for Harris. In the New York Times’ most recent survey, 34% of respondents with bachelor’s degrees said the U.S. was “on the right track.” Just 24% of respondents who do not have a bachelor’s degree say so.
For those without degrees, “there’s perception that there’s a lack of good-paying jobs that don’t require higher education,” Nelsen said.
“What they’re thinking about are opportunities in the workforce where they can make a decent living wage without having gone to a four-year university.”
While that view was not widely shared in the overall survey, he said, there are “clear economic grievances” among younger, less-educated men.
“They’re saying there’s no work available that allows me to get by.”