The great Winston Churchill was reputed to have observed, “If a man at twenty is not a liberal, then he has no heart. If a man at forty is not a conservative, then he has no brain.” That’s an apocryphal statement, of course, but that doesn’t mean it’s untrue. Younger people tend to skew more politically to the left than their elders – at least, if you look at the broad strokes. But there is also a political pendulum that swings back and forth; as recently as the ’80s, there was a trend wherein it was “hip” for young people with hippie-Boomer parents (full disclosure – not all Boomers were hippies; me, for example) to rebel by taking on the conservative jacket-and-tie businessman mantle, as portrayed by Michael J. Fox’s Alex Keaton in the ’80’s TV show “Family Ties.”
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That trend may be returning, right now, as young voters, citing the moribund economy, are taking another look at Donald Trump.
Thin with a boyish face and earrings in both ears, 23-year-old Isayah Turner does not look like a stereotypical Trump supporter, who tend to be middle aged or older.
Nevertheless, Turner drove two hours from his home outside Milwaukee on a recent Tuesday to see Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, one of a contingent of young voters there that some opinion polls suggest could be a growing and important demographic for Trump.
For Democratic incumbent Joe Biden, who overwhelmingly won the youth vote in 2020, an erosion of his support among young voters could potentially dampen his hopes of a second term.
Turner, who runs a dog breeding business with his mother, voted for Trump in 2020. He supports Trump’s pro-oil drilling stance, his opposition to gun control – Turner owns several firearms – and his pledge to crack down on illegal immigration.
Reuters/Ipsos conducted one of the polls mentioned, and while the advantage Trump showed isn’t huge, it should still be concerning to the Biden campaign.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll in March showed Americans age 18-29 favoring Biden over Trump by just 3 percentage points – 29% to 26% – with the rest favoring another candidate or unsure of who if anyone would get their vote.
If Trump, 77, stays close to Biden, 81, in this demographic all the way to Election Day on Nov. 5 it would be a major gain compared to 2020, when Biden won the youth vote by 24 points.
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That’s telling – but could there be more to it than economics? Granted, Joe Biden is underwater in the RealClearPolitics averages on key issues such as the economy and immigration; it’s not even close.
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Young men in particular may have other reasons for shying away from Democrats, and those reasons aren’t economic but social.
Young men in the United States have been labeled as misogynistic and sexist for at least a generation. The left shouts about “the patriarchy,” Biden’s new Title IX rules effectively remove due process from young men in academia who are accused of, well, anything. The left hammers young men with “toxic masculinity” accusations when they show any signs of traditional masculinity at all. When it comes to traditional manhood, the left has come unglued, and it’s likely that many young men are looking at the rather more muscular right and finding it copacetic.
To be sure, young people – young couples in particular – have to be looking at befuddled old Joe Biden and his Weekend at Bernie’s Presidency for what it is – a sham – and looking at their career prospects, their chances of buying a home, their bank account balances, and seeing some reasons to vote Trump. But those aren’t the only reasons, and this is another avenue which, if pursued, can only give Republicans a boost.
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