Image illustrated by Jennifer Borrenson (Sourced from USA Today)
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With former President Donald J. Trump winning a sweeping victory in the 2024 presidential election, Democrats in both the media and general population are searching for answers as to how this happened. Most presidential polls once again underestimated Trump’s ability to win the presidency, especially with their predictions regarding the youth vote. Although they were pretty spot-on when predicting the turnout and alignment of voters above 35, the percentage of voters between the ages of 18-35 expected to vote Democrat was grossly overestimated. According to USA Today, Democrat candidates typically receive 60% of young people’s votes. However, Vice President Kamala Harris only received 54% of those votes, with a majority coming from young women. A new trend is becoming clear: many young men are jumping ship on the Democratic Party in favor of Trump’s bombastic policies.
Circle Analysis of AP Votescast Survey
56% of young men expressed support for Trump in the past election cycle, with that percentage only going up in the older age groups. So, what happened? It seems that the rise of so-called “man-o-sphere” podcasts broadcasted by the likes of Theo Von and Joe Rogan had a much larger impact than expected.
Rogan alone boasts an audience of 11 million viewers per episode, and is consistently topping the podcasts charts both domestically and internationally. Although he used to identify with the Democratic Party, Rogan made the switch to MAGA due to the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, his podcast skews toward younger listeners, with 51% falling between the ages of 18-34. A whopping 81% of those are men, many of which identify with his anti-news and anti-political-correctness messages. In fact, only 12% of Rogan’s listeners state that they would trust something published by a newspaper. This idea of rejecting political correctness and embracing fringe movements is one we see echoed in the Trump campaign, which itself began as a right-wing fringe movement.
Dana White, the commissioner of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and staunch MAGA supporter, compounded the importance of podcasters in this election when he spoke at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago election party. He specifically stated, “I want to thank the Nelk boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, ‘Bussin with the Boys,’ and last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan.” Clearly, Republicans are aware of the impact that these men had on Trump’s results, as all the podcasters previously mentioned hosted Trump at some point during the election cycle. (Only Rogan extended an invitation to VP Harris as well.) However, the bigger question is why did these podcasts become so popular among young men in the first place? They would not have been able to win Trump an election if there was not some bigger issue at play.
With the onset of third wave feminism in the 1990s and the #MeToo movement in the 2010s, women are continuing to be empowered in both professional and domestic settings. In fact, women have even begun to rapidly surpass men in terms of college degrees earned and high-paying corporate positions obtained. According to Pew Research, men who did not receive a college education are more likely to justify this gap by claiming that they simply did not want to get a degree (34% of men to 25% of women), whereas women are more likely to blame their lack of an education on economic factors such as high costs (44% of women to 39% of men). The Financial Times also reported that young male economic activity has decreased significantly over the past two decades, with young women being significantly more likely to work a full time job between the ages of 16 to 25.
Perhaps most interestingly, the CDC reports that sexual activity for young, straight, males has decreased by 10% from 2002 to 2024. This has culminated in the “male loneliness epidemic” that has spread across the U.S. in the last 30 years, which was only exacerbated by the pandemic. While most men are introduced to the manosphere simply because they want to dispel their loneliness and find a group of like-minded individuals, they are quickly indoctrinated to believe the source of all their problems is the feminist movement. Thus, even though this problem is far more likely to be rooted in the extreme pressures a capitalist society places upon its young members to “kill or be killed” (i.e., to place disproportionate priority on career success as opposed to other endeavors, such as spending time with family or on personal development), many men place the blame for their loneliness and general lack of achievements on women.
This phenomenon can be seen most clearly in the rhetoric spread by manosphere podcasters. Rogan, for example, once tweeted, “If you’re a man and call yourself a feminist I hope you choke to death on vegan pizza while crying over a lady gaga song.” Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed misogynist and “alpha male,” claimed, “I’m a realist and when you’re a realist, you’re sexist. There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist.”
Tate was later kicked off Twitter for claiming that women should “bear all responsibility” for enduring a sexual assault. However, he was reinstated by the ever-vehement defender of “free speech” Elon Musk when he bought the platform. Evidently, these podcasters are preying on a group of vulnerable young men to push their own violent rhetoric about women—and they’re being handed a platform to do it on. Even worse, their tactics are working.
It’s easy to see why these podcasters and their listeners latched onto Trump’s campaign. One of his main promises is to bring back “traditional family values.” And, as we’ve seen, Trump is no stranger to the same kind of rhetoric against women that Tate and Rogan tout on their shows. In 2005, for example, this now-infamous clip of Donald Trump and Billy Bush was recorded. In it, Trump states:
“Yeah that’s her with the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful…I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”
Which was shortly followed up by:
“Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
This tape was released shortly before the 2016 election, which Trump went on to win. While he’s claimed that he no longer thinks this way and avoided using such language in his 2020 or 2024 campaigns, manosphere podcasters certainly believe he still shares and represents their values. Specifically, they hope that Trump will return men to their “rightful” place at the helm of society—and they frequently push this message onto their audience. As a result, troubled young listeners are sucked into a hyper-masculine dystopia. As Elon Musk so eloquently put it, “the cavalry has arrived…men are voting in record numbers…they now realize everything is at stake.”
The voting numbers among young men for Republican candidates will only continue to grow as fan bases such as Joe Rogan’s continue to expand. Even worse, Trump’s victory in this election has emboldened misogynists masquerading as political figures to increase their violent rhetoric against women. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) reports that, since election day, girls as young as second grade have endured chants of “your body, my choice” from their peers in school—a play on the “my body, my choice” chant used by pro-choice protesters. Notably, this phrase was popularized by yet another manosphere podcaster, Nick Fuentes. If children are being indoctrinated into the cause this early, then it is all but certain that we will see the number of young Republican voters continue to spike in the years to come.
So, where do we go from here? In the next four years, the Republican Party—and Trump himself—should make it clear that they are not supportive of the violent rhetoric women have endured at the hands of podcasters and their listeners. Silence on the matter is simply showing that they are complicit. But would they risk alienating their new base of voters? Likely not. Democrats will instead need to find a way to rally young women and undecided young male voters behind them, or face increasingly bleak election results in the midterms come 2026.
