YMRI/YouGov Release Poll of Young Men Voters & Views on Presidential Race
Young Men Support Harris At Slightly Higher Rate than Biden Against Trump, But Still Far Below The Rates they Have Supported Democrats in Recent Elections
The Young Men Research Initiative today released new YouGov survey data on young men’s vote choice in the 2024 election. Young men aged 18-29 support Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by just 38-36 percent, with fully 21 percent saying they would be undecided or unsure if they would vote. In a threeway head to head, men 18-29 are split 32-33 in their support for Kamala Harris or Donald trump, with RFK Jr taking 15 percent and 6 percent saying they are unsure or would not vote. This is similar to their support for Biden at 31, Trump at 32 and Kennedy at 11 percent in a threeway horse race.
Young men who are registered to vote are substantially more favorable to Harris, while young men who are not registered support Trump. Harris pulls in 52% of registered young men, much closer to the 54% of young men that Biden won in 2020. This mirrors other polls which suggest that less politically-engaged voters are trending toward Trump. While this may be good news for Harris in this election, it raises serious questions about how the political views of these young men may evolve over time as more of them get registered to vote.
Separately, young men were then assigned to a message test in which they were asked to compare an unnamed female Democratic candidate against Donald Trump. Half of young men were given an argument in favor of that candidate centered around the importance of having the first female president. The other half of young men were given an argument around that candidate’s support for high-paying jobs and affordable housing. Men in the first condition preferred the female candidate over Trump by just a +4-point margin, but preferred her by a +11-point margin in the second condition – a statistically significant difference.
Similarly, when asked about support for legal abortion, young men’s support dropped from 52 percent when the issue was framed as one of “personal liberty” to 46 percent when the issue was framed as being important for women’s rights. In both messaging conditions, young men remained supportive of abortion rights overall.
Just over half of young men (51 percent) say feminism is about favoring women over men.
The left has a problem in how we communicate with men, creating a vacuum that the right is filling with misogynistic, but entertaining, media. What this poll suggests is that young men are alienated by language from the left that positions them as perpetrators of historic injustices when they see themselves as struggling to get by. For progressives to be competitive, we need to change both what and how we communicate with young men. And we need to make long term investments in studying how those opinions are being shaped.
From an electoral politics perspective, the trend of young men drifting away from Democrats should be of huge concern to candidates up and down the ticket. YMRI believes that we can’t give up on half of a generation that will be able to vote for another 50 years. This research shows that we can make inroads by changing how we talk about Democratic issues that young men already support. We should be using targeted messaging to reach them.
In the coming weeks YMRI plans to release additional survey data on the media consumption of this cohort, and the popularity of specific influencers.
The Yougov survey was conducted from July 9 to July 23, with a sample size of 1,092 men aged 18-29. The survey was fielded from July 9-July 23, 2024 and was weighted according to race/ethnicity, education, vote history, vote turnout history, and geography. The sample margin of error is +/- 3.5 percent.
Your article would benefit from information about how frequently voters change party or topic of interest as they age. This might be a good start: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/age-generational-cohorts-and-party-identification/
Nice work!