WASHINGTON ― Democrats in the 2024 presidential election lost young men by major margins: 55% of men aged 18-29 backed President Donald Trump, while just 41% backed then-Vice President Kamala Harris. It was a massive shift to the right compared to the 2020 presidential election.
That loss set off waves of teeth-gnashing and introspection in the party, which likes to think of itself as having a youthful, forward-looking sheen. Answers to the problem were proposed: Democrats needed to find a liberal answer to the popular podcaster Joe Rogan, who had endorsed Trump. They needed to moderate on social issues, especially those tied to gender. They needed $20 million to study the problem.
Two years later, polls indicate the party has a massive lead among young men, and even has a shot at winning the votes of men of all ages. No liberal Rogan equivalent has emerged ― even if Rogan and his podcast cohort are significantly less Trump-enthusiastic than they were in 2024. The party has moderated somewhat on immigration and gun control.
How did they do it? There are two possibilities: Either Trump’s broken promises on combating inflation, releasing the Epstein files and ending foreign wars alienated young men, or Democrats’ seemingly newfound dedication to making gains at the gym is translating into gains at the polls.
Polling released Sunday showed U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan running almost even among men with his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, who had a 10-percentage-point lead among men in the same poll two months ago.
El-Sayed campaigns with a combative rhetorical style, likes to wear tight T-shirts and has made multiple videos of himself working out ― while also insisting he’s not showing off in the same way as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., two men who are also fond of filming themselves exercising.
“Being a man is not about how you show up at the gym. It’s like how you show up for your family. It’s about how you show up in your community,” El-Sayed said in one recent video in which he’s standing next to a rack of barbells.
Other Democratic candidates who’ve posted videos of themselves lifting weights include Colin Allred, Beau Bayh, Jason Crow and Cait Conley.
“Most politicians are weak, bought and paid for by special interests,” Bayh, who is leading in the polls for Indiana secretary of state, says in an ad showing him on a bench press. (He’s the son of Evan Bayh and the grandson of Birch Bayh, both of them former U.S. senators.)
Trump, meanwhile, has taken to rhapsodizing about Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted’s buttocks, which he has described as “a pile of muscle.”
For Democrats, the reps could be paying off. At the very least, they’re not hurting a realignment of younger male voters that would maybe be happening anyway because of widespread dissatisfaction with inflation and Trump’s handling of foreign and domestic policy.
A nationwide survey of men ages 18 to 30 released in September found Democrats had a 17-point advantage among the young men most motivated to vote.
“Young men have definitely swung back away from Trump more fervently than just about any other demographic in the electorate. Part of it is just pure thermostatic politics, but most of it, I think, is Trump’s own doing,” Charlie Sabgir, director of Young Men Research Project, told HuffPost, adding that voters linked Trump’s war in Iran to the higher cost of gas.
Sabgir also pointed to a recent analysis finding male podcasters talking much less about the president lately.
“Trump himself has definitely lost a lot of his kind of masculine appeal, however you want to call it, his kind of cultural cachet,” Sabgir said.
As for El-Sayed, the Michigan Democrat has made a concerted effort to appeal to younger male voters since launching his campaign last year. One of his videos showed him getting a spot on the bench press from Hasan Piker, a socialist Twitch streamer and fitness enthusiast who lamented that there are more millionaires in America than men who can bench 225 pounds. (That’s the amount Bayh benches in his ad; in this video, El-Sayed put up 315 for one rep.) Maybe the macho habits have helped El-Sayed win over voters.
“There’s no evidence that it has not helped him,” Sabgir said.
But El-Sayed has caught a ton of flak for his association with Piker. His former opponent in the Democratic primary, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), cited Piker as a reason for her shock endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers, even after El-Sayed distanced himself from the streamer. Is it possible Piker has helped El-Sayed’s numbers?
“I’m not everybody’s cup of tea, right? I know what my role is,” Piker told HuffPost in August. “My role is to get people who are under the age of 45, who are disillusioned with politics, who are just not usually invested in politics, to be primed and activated for the right kinds of candidates and for the right kinds of policies.”
Billy Begala, executive director of the Speaking with American Men project, a Democrat-backed initiative that researches political shifts among men ages 18 to 29, said young men’s opinions of Trump have “completely inverted” since the start of 2025. At the time of Trump’s inauguration, young men believed his presidency would make a positive difference in their lives by a 33-point margin, he said. Today, that number has plummeted to a negative 35-point margin.
In other words, “a devastating −68-point swing,” Begala told HuffPost. “The fling young men had with the right — which helped Trump win young men by 14 points in 2024 — is resoundingly over.”
The reasons why? Trump didn’t follow through on his promises to make their wages stretch further, make homeownership more accessible, bring down the cost of living and end foreign wars.
“On each point, Republicans have betrayed these young men,” Begala added, “and they have taken notice.”