According to Philip Bump the data shows that this idea that a bunch of young, white Andrew Tate/ Joe Rogan dudes were the key to Trump’s victory in November is simply not correct. In a way, its something much more disturbing:
YouGov has been tracking Trump’s favorability since early 2016 as part of the work it does for the Economist. The polling firm shared quarterly averages of the president’s numbers since then. What we see is that there has been an upward trend of support among younger U.S. citizens, while the views of older Americans have remained fairly flat.
The increase since early 2021 has been higher among young men than women (18 points vs. 11 points) but that is again a function of race. White men under 30 have gotten three points more favorable to Trump than White women in that age range. Non-White men now view Trump 29 points more favorably, a jump that’s more than 20 points bigger than the increase among non-White women.
He points out that the younger generation is much less white in general which means that these shifts have a larger effect o the overall population of young people than the rest of us but the partisan shift is interesting as well, particularly when it comes to gender:
Since 2016, White men under the age of 30 have gotten 17 points more Republican on net while young White women have stayed about the same. The gap in partisan identity among young White men peaked in 2021 and has since declined, landing just above where it was in 2003.
The shift among young non-White men has been much larger — more than 30 points since 2016. That’s true of both those under 30 and those aged 30 to 44. The shift among younger non-White women has been 25 points on net in favor of the Republican Party since 2016.
Younger non-White Americans, though, remain much less Republican than younger White Americans. We’re describing the change, not the end point. In the 2024 Gallup data, about 58 percent of young White men said they were Republican or Republican-leaning. Among young non-White men, 39 percent did. Among young non-White women, that figure fell to 28 percent.
Ok, that’s good. But why the shift among non-white young people toward Trump in any case? It’s not a gender gap apparently and it’s not about issues:
If we look at policy views — rather than ones centered on politics — the argument that there’s been a significant divergence on gender erodes further.
[…]
“The bottom line is we don’t see a ton of evidence of a rightward shift among 18-29 year olds in this data,” Schaffner said in an email. “Perhaps that’s occurring on other issues that we aren’t capturing here, but even when you look at questions about racial attitudes and sexism there still isn’t anything too dramatic.”
The same holds for recent polling from The Post. On a question about Trump’s efforts to exceed his authority since returning to office, young men are less likely than men overall to say that he was acting within his authority, and the gap between men and women under the age of 30 was lower than any group of respondents aged 40 or over.
[…]
That non-White Americans (and, as the VoteCast and Edison exit polls suggest, Hispanics in particular) shifted to the right in the Trump era is not new. What the data presented above suggests is that the decline in racial polarization explains more of the shift among younger people than does gender.
I find that incredibly depressing and I have no explanation for it. These particular kids aren’t voting like their parents which I guess may be understandable but why in the world are they so enamored of Trump? They don’t agree with him and it doesn’t seem to be about young men going for the macho party or the macho dude. Even the younger Black and Latino women have moved toward him. Is it just because they, like many of their white counterparts, now see him as normal and are just going along for the ride? I don’t get it.