As the US election approached, one trend attracted more media attention than anything else: the clear shift of young American men to the right. “Will gender divide American elections?” the Financial Times asked on Tuesday. US release at the end of October Vox outlined ‘huge gender gap’ that will determine race New York Magazine wondered but also how this became a “gender gap choice.”

The consensus among pollsters generally appears to be twofold: Abortion rose to the top of the list as an election question following the overturn of Roe v Wade; and as women lean more and more to the left and men remain in the center or look to the right, the United States will reflect more general trends to the West. There were doubts that women would vote Kamala Harris While young men in droves become decision makers Donald Trump.

Real data tells a more complex story than this rough assessment. Harris did worse among women than Biden did in 2020; and one of the important factors for Trump was Generation X men (by the way, the “black male vote” that Trump needed to win never actually materialized).

Yet both sides were aware of the sexual politics driving this contest for the White House. Trump’s media campaign appeared to specifically target young men. He appeared on a podcast with the phenomenon in July Logan Paul (this currently has 6.7 million views on YouTube); recently sat down with Joe Rogan for three hours (nearly 46 million views on YouTube). Conversations about both are convoluted, discursive and strange: from immigration to Iraq to Kim Jong-un to the existence of aliens. But the strategy is clear: This is where you’ll find the disaffected, low-inclination young male audience and feed them Trumpism.

Harris went the other way, appearing on Call Her Daddy, the women’s issues podcast second only to Joe Rogan in popularity in the US. Edison Research estimates that about a quarter of its audience is Republican women, half is Democrats, and a large portion of the entire demographic lives in key constituencies for Harris (the south and midwest). Both Trump and Harris have used alternative media to strengthen their existing base and reach a new base. This time it brought more gains to Trump.

We’ve heard a lot about how the generational divide defines politics. Of course, we still see this – there has been a lot of intergenerational confusion over Covid policy (young people too reckless; old people too selfish). This is a constant dynamic when we talk about a hostile real estate market: rent is too high; Boomers bought their homes very cheaply; The social contract between young and old has been broken. And of course there has always been a gap between parents and their children when it comes to questions of culture (look at teenagers and their naively modern sexual mores).

However, a new front has opened. The divide may not have been as simple as the media predicted, but gender politics nevertheless heavily pervaded race and campaign strategies. It’s easy to understand how this happens. The widening “gap” is creating a lot of noise, and it is not just limited to the United States. Earlier this year, Economist I looked at survey data from a number of western countries and found that young men are more conservative than young women, more so now than they were two decades ago.

One of the many progressive slogans that has been debunked in recent years is the idea that each generation is more liberal than the last. The march towards the end of history may have been long, but the debate continued because it was relentless. And the ultimate destination is a progressive utopia where the conservatism of our ancestors is absolved from society; Each new young generation has emerged with more and more modern values. Data from Europe and Trump’s decision to target young men make this assumption seem rather premature.

The right has been clever in mobilizing very modern masculine anxieties. A new form of sexist language emerged in this decade: the emergence of the phrase “toxic masculinity” and the accompanying condemnation of young men and their existence. The result is a group of people who feel disenfranchised by culture and unrepresented in the modern political landscape.

Young people may not have won him the election, but Democrats still need to worry. Trump knows how to talk to them. In June 2016, Trump hit a rhetorical gold mine even as he was running against Hillary Clinton. “The campaign slogan is ‘I’m with him,'” he reminded viewers. “You know what my answer to that is? ” He continued, “I’m with you.”

If we were to question where this huge gap between men and women on the political spectrum comes from, perhaps this overture would be a remarkable place to start. Trump should not win with this group of people, especially the youngest among them; But until liberals adapt their language – to reflect that young men also have discontents – it will continue to play into their ears.