Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Ken Martin has dismissed concerns about the party’s relationship with young male voters following recent election victories in Virginia and New York City. Martin, speaking at a press conference, asserted that the party’s recent wins indicate they are on the right track. He emphasized the importance of retaining young men within the Democratic coalition.
The article highlights various analyses from party strategists and experts about the shifting political landscape and the challenges Democrats face in re-engaging younger voters. Prior to the off-year elections, James Carville, a veteran strategist for the Democratic Party, warned that far-left messaging and policies were hurting the Democratic Party’s image with young men. ‘They were told, ‘The future is female, you must always believe the woman is never wrong, #MeToo,’ Carville said on a podcast in July. ‘And men are like, ‘S—, do I count? What about my life? I mean, we’re only 48% of the voting population.”
More recently, he has argued that any future president from either party will have to move in a more economically populist direction to win back young people who cannot afford the same standard of living as their parents and grandparents. In March, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein spoke with a Democratic pollster David Shor about how ’75-year-old White men supported Kamala Harris at a significantly higher rate than 20-year-old White men.’
‘It is a real shift,’ Shor agreed. ‘This is the thing I am the most shocked by in the last four years — that young people have gone from being the most progressive generation since the Baby Boomers, and maybe even in some ways more so, to becoming potentially the most conservative generation that we’ve experienced maybe in 50 to 60 years.’
NYU professor Scott Galloway argued that the affordability crisis made people turn against Democrats in 2024. He argued in a podcast in November that one of the biggest shifts he noticed in the 2024 election was middle-aged women toward the GOP, suggesting that mothers were voting for Republicans in order to help their struggling sons.