How can New York Democrats win back young men?

These days, when people think about young men and what they do at the ballot box, they conjure images of MAGA hats and shocking takes on X and TikTok. In recent years, that demographic has looked less like a sure thing for Democrats and more like a growth opportunity for Republicans. Men in general tend to lean more conservative than women, but the youth vote had always been a strength for liberals. For some time, though, there had been signs that the electorate was gradually shifting. At the same time, many social markers of young men began to shift away from traditional liberal spaces like mainstream media and academia – and podcasters and livestreamers started pushing conservative politics, with streamer Adin Ross even giving away Donald Trump-branded Teslas. While a Twitch account isn’t necessarily a pipeline to the voting booth, the shift speaks volumes about the online spaces young men flock to.

According to a poll from Tufts University’s Circle institute, American men between 18 and 29 years old shifted about 6 points to the right in 2024 compared to 2020 – a shift that was most pronounced among Latinos, men of color and young men without a college education. Political scientist Brian Schaffner, who leads the center, said that while it’s difficult to tell whether the last election was a blip or the new normal, the trend of men without a college degree moving to the right is unlikely to reverse.

“The noncollege young men are actually more conservative. And so over time, I think that group could grow, because we do know that unlike, say, 20 years ago, that the majority of young people going to college are women, not men,” Schaffner told City & State. “And I think those trends have kind of leveled out a bit. So I’m not sure it’s going to get more pronounced, but I do think that trend of sort of this divide between young people who are going to college and those who aren’t is significant, and that obviously will carry through later in life as well.”

New York is an epicenter of Democratic Party politics, and it has not been immune to this national trend. From New York City to farmland upstate, Democrats have lost touch with young male voters, allowing Republicans to capitalize on their cultural and economic concerns. But some Democratic politicians are experimenting with positive visions of masculinity and economic populist policies that could bring these voters back into the fold.

Are Democrats ‘man enough’?

In 2024, the nadir of Democrats’ attempts to repeat their success with the young male vote was likely the “Man Enough” Harris-Walz ad that went viral for what was seen as a woeful misunderstanding of men and their concerns. The advertisement featured a series of men explaining how they were manly via their automotive expertise, steak and whiskey consumption, among other tropes, before pivoting to argue they were so manly they supported Kamala Harris’ campaign. Something about the ad seemed off. It was as if someone described a man to an alien, and that alien was put in charge of crafting political messaging. What should have been a rebuke of hypermasculine sales pitches coming from the right just made the party appear out of touch.

Democrats haven’t been resting on their laurels or simply throwing their hands up, but their attempts to right the ship have been panned all the same. Although national Democrats have launched a plan to strategically target young men, the way they’ve gone about that has been looked at with confusion and dismissal. Millions of dollars are now being spent to figure out how young men think, but as the party grapples with the problems of its consultant culture, some wonder why it took focus groups to figure out that Lady Gaga didn’t move the needle when it came to outreach to young men.

Who are Democrats even trying to reach? A demographic as broad as young men shouldn’t be approached with a monolithic perspective, but in some ways it has been. In reality, young men from different regions and backgrounds – ethnic, religious or otherwise – can have wildly divergent outlooks on life, let alone politics. In New York, upper-middle-class South Asian men on Long Island have far different experiences and prospects than their young male counterparts in the outer boroughs, just as young college-educated white men in Westchester County have concerns that aren’t in lockstep with the children of farmers in Broome County. Within the Latino community, a young man whose family has been in the country for decades won’t necessarily have the same outlook as one with undocumented parents. And young Black men whose families rely upon social services may have different priorities than those whose families have immigrant backgrounds.

Much like young men themselves, society is still grappling with what masculinity can and should look like in 2025 and beyond. The current crop of young male voters came out of a pandemic that, for many, set them back financially, socially and emotionally. Their approach to many aspects of life were crafted at a time when American masculinity was at a crossroads. What forms of manhood are acceptable? Should one hew closer to the worldview of their father or to the one being taught on campus or TV? Some men saw two doors, one that looked like carrying some degree of shame around manhood, even if that wasn’t necessarily the intent of some thought leaders, and another that appeared as a rebuke of a culture that vilified them. Each was politicized with varying degrees of success, but this became part of the pool of voters that each party had to win over.

Republicans successfully capitalized on the idea that men felt under attack for having classically male traits and not ascribing to socially accepted language around gender, sexuality, race and diversity. It led many to conclude that a new wave of right-wing young men was on pace to overtake modern American politics. But the average young man isn’t yearning for the opportunity to misgender someone or throw around the “r” word while contemplating the rest of their day over a Celsius and fresh Zyn. The world’s waning tolerance for “bro culture” may be a factor in some young men’s political movement to the right in recent years, but it would be an oversimplification to say it’s all that matters.

Instead, young men in New York and across the country stared out at a future that was either created by Democrats or masterfully laid at their feet by Republicans. And as last year’s election results showed, they didn’t like what they saw: a job market that isn’t nearly as promising as they had hoped, unaffordable housing and a life perpetually on the edge of insolvency. Why save if you’ll never have enough?

Young men tend to be leery of Democrats’ policy proposals. They tend to be more worried about their career prospects, by comparison, than women, while having concerns around affordability in America. The Biden administration tried to forgive large amounts of student loans, but it was overruled in the courts. And while student loan payments had been paused for years during Trump’s first term and under Biden, loan servicers are now prepared to garnish wages this year. This and the sour taste from experiencing high inflation didn’t do Democrats many favors in November. Locally, the type of nanny state politics that has proven unpopular in the past seems to have gained steam, with attacks on popular products like nicotine pouches and vapes. For young men of color, there’s also a feeling that the Democratic Party only takes an interest in them during campaigns before losing interest while in office.

Just ask Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, who is currently in the midst of a primary challenge to Gov. Kathy Hochul. While criticizing the governor, Delgado has adopted a populist platform that he believes better speaks to disengaged voters like young men. While in a Pennsylvania barber shop stumping for Harris, he said a senior gave him an idea of what a younger generation was going through, like how some young Black families are disincentivized from being together due to government programs.

“Unless you’re engaging with the community directly, unless you’re having that real conversation and really listening only in that space, are you going to be able to turn around and think about what are the systemic realities that we can change at the policy level?” Delgado said.

In some cases, young men’s distrust of Democrats reflects a broader disillusionment with the party that they share with older family members. In immigrant communities, young men see the damage being done to their friends, family and neighbors as a result of Republican policies and, in some cases, blame Democrats for not doing more to protect them. They might also latch on to the idea that some immigrant groups are getting more than they are or didn’t “wait their turn.”

All of this doesn’t naturally add up to a vote for Republicans. It could also mean not voting at all. Voting rates among young men were 7 points lower than young women in 2024, a gap that’s grown since 2020 but has existed for decades. Disillusionment is a greater threat to anyone courting young male voters who are coming to believe that the political system simply does not work for them and neither party is actually invested in their well-being.

Getting engaged

Recently, Democratic politicians have become very attached to the phrase “meeting them where they’re at.” In New York, though, there aren’t that many examples of targeted political outreach to men in their 20s that shows the party is really committed to that idea. It can be tough to engage young men in politics; when weighing their options for the evening or weekend, few young men will choose a campaign event or town hall.

Still, some have taken the idea to heart and come up with creative ways to engage these potential voters. Rep. Pat Ryan, a moderate Democrat in his early 40s, told City & State that he has made inroads with the demographic by going to minor league baseball games. While a carte blanche strategy borders on stereotype, it’s true that young men do enjoy sports, and Ryan’s attacks on the NFL and streaming service Peacock for exclusively airing a playoff game on the subscription service has also played well.

In New York City, mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani has demonstrated that running charismatic candidates who know how to use social media can pay dividends when attempting to galvanize young voters to come out to the polls. In addition to crafting videos that have gone viral on social media and engaging with popular leftist streamers like Hasan Piker, Mamdani has shown a similar willingness to Ryan to go out and meet young men in their own spaces. Earlier this year, he canvassed outside a Knicks playoff game at Madison Square Garden.

Republicans have also found themselves looking outside the box for solutions. Broome County GOP Chair Benji Federman, since he’s in his early 30s, doesn’t need to think that far back for ways to engage college-aged men. He’s planning to talk with frats at Binghamton University and explore how they join the party’s ranks of door knockers. He also wants to send out mass texts that invite prospective voters out to a bar for a drink, where, if they want, he can share information about the party platform with them. Outside of his own attempts at engagement, he pits part of the young male shift toward Republicans to the differing brands of theirs, and Democrats.

“Democrats are for fairness,” Federman said, “and even playing fields, whereas Republicans have really told young men, ‘dream big, the sky’s the limit’ and (have) a very strong economic message, which I think resonates with young men.”

At some point, the Democratic Party ceded the argument that it was the party of opportunity. Republicans have been able to capitalize on that in innovative ways, even if the message they are sharing is divisive. At the root of it is marketing the idea that Democrats don’t care about young men. It’s hard to say that explicitly, but it’s very easy to point at groups and argue that they have been receiving outsized attention and support from Democrats.

The LGBTQ+ community and immigrants have been consistent targets, the former sometimes serving as a scapegoat for swing-seat Democrats. There’s also the class argument that college-educated Americans are the true constituents of the Democratic Party, a divide highlighted by the rise of pro-Palestinian college protests at Columbia University (and many other campuses) and Republicans’ swift crackdown on collegiate free speech policies. The tactic covers a lot of ground in one stroke, as women outnumber men on college campuses and the Ivy League cohort that helps run the Democratic Party makes natural enemies for certain subsets of young men.

Beyond political and social finger-pointing, there’s a casual way in which some of the most influential figures in male-centered media suggest that Democrats or liberal ideology are both bad and not something guys do – and the left doesn’t really have a counterpunch to that. At its best, it can look like taking intellectual pot shots and, at its worst, bragging that you get laid more. For all the ways that attacking Gen Z’s societal failings is a conservative-coded activity, they had the quickest and earliest grasp on how to turn their arguments into the sort of clippable, memeable and postable content that would connect with young male voters. Democrats are still finding their way on that front, as the futile search for a “liberal Joe Rogan” continues.

“We know that many people, male and female, cannot bring themselves to vote for a woman, let alone a woman of color at the top of any ticket,” Fordham University associate professor Christina Greer said. “There’s a reason why we don’t have any Black female governors ever in the history of the United States, and many people just could not stomach the fact that there would be a Black woman as the president.”

Democrats like Ryan believe one solution is to promote a positive alternative to conservative notions of manhood, centered around being a responsible family man. “I think Trump offers a really negative model for that, even though I know he’s seen some appeal with younger men,” Ryan said. “I think it’s because Democrats have not offered a better alternative – that you can both care for people and fight for them, and you need both.”

New approaches

Hope doesn’t appear to be completely lost for Democrats trying to stay in the running with the current crop of men. Mamdani’s campaign was a breath of fresh air for many in New York politics, and even across the country, largely due to the fact that he galvanized a wide cross section of the electorate with a solutions-driven platform. While Mamdani himself can’t be replicated (unless Astoria has a progressive politician factory we don’t know about), the ethos of his primary win can be.

Mamdani has shown that it really is possible to meet people where they’re at, whether that’s virtually or physically, and promising easy-to-grasp policy goals will ease the generational burdens facing young men. You can even throw in a Twitch appearance for good measure. Is it easy? There have been attempts to replicate his go everywhere and post everything tactics, and they don’t always work, so perhaps not. But financial backers appear to be buying into the idea of campaigns that speak to youth in effective ways, as evidenced by 12th Congressional District hopeful Liam Elkind’s impressive fundraising haul.

The idea of querying focus groups on how to reach young men still draws chortles in some parts of New York, and some Democrats’ pivots to appeal to young men – like California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s podcast and all-caps tweets – may have elevated his profile but likely won’t have a lasting impact on electoral turnout.

Like all voters, young men ultimately want a sales pitch that speaks to them, and, beyond that, one that speaks to them like they are more than a political asset. If Democrats don’t make that effort, someone else will. People like political activist David Hogg wonder if part of the solution is replacing the gerontocracy that leads the party. The inability to replace elected officials who display a clear cognitive decline is part of what drives insurgent campaigns, and makes it clear that if Democrats want to retain and extend their power, they need to find the messages – and messengers – that resonate with voters.

Democrats’ failure to engage young men has been laid bare, and attempts at course correction are beginning to take shape. The DCCC ran an ad in Rep. Mike Lawler’s district that attempted to blame increased burger prices on Republicans. It’s a simpler idea than the ramifications of health care funding cuts for a generation that may have a family member relying on subsidized health care, but might not even grasp the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. No one is mistaking identifying the problem as a victory, but progress is progress.