Donald Trump needed a giant sausage party on Election Day to win the presidency, and men delivered. According to Cornell’s Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, men voted for Trump over Kamala Harris by 12 points.
Men favoring Republicans isn’t anything new, of course. What was surprising, however, was the ratio of men under thirty that supported Trump. Large, post-election polls from various institutions revealed that nearly six in ten young men supported the now-president. Men under thirty voted in droves for Barack Obama, and even supported Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden by slimmer but still healthy margins. Yet they defected ‘bigly’ to Trump.
University of Richmond social psychologist Adam Stanaland thinks money was a big reason why. As he wrote in Scientific American, “Gen Z men voted for Trump as a response to an economy that is excluding them, with one in five young men presently jobless. In a culture that equates ‘being a man’ with financial success, supporting one’s family, and achieving the American dream, the election results are now no surprise to me.”
Young men overwhelmingly said that cost of living was their top issue in the 2024 election, and Trump and his sugar daddy Elon Musk spoke directly to their aspirations of wealth, vowing to fill their wallets, crypto wallets, and stock portfolios. The duo promised ginormous tax cuts, a soaring stock market, copious, high-paying jobs thanks to tariffs, and a cryptocurrency bonanza.
In an economy they perceive to be rigged against them, many Gen Z men now see crypto and stocks to be the best way to get ahead. Just over four in ten men aged 18 to 29 have traded crypto, and they are by far the greatest adopters of any demographic group. Young men are also flocking to risky options and margin trading on investing apps like Robinhood, where the average age of users is 32.
In the wake of Trump’s election, Trump and Musk’s promised riches seemed to be materializing. Bitcoin quickly catapulted over 50 percent to above $100,000. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq’s bull runs accelerated. Stocks favored by young male investors rocketed. Palantir tripled over three months. Tesla nearly doubled. Reddit doubled. Robinhood soared by 160 percent.
The mooning of these high-flying assets persisted through mid-February. At the time, a J.L. Partners poll commissioned by the Trump-friendly Daily Mail showed Trump’s support amongst young men to be positively stratospheric: 65 percent approved of the job he was doing.
But then, like an exploding SpaceX Starship, it all came crashing down. Over the next two weeks, Elon Musk’s wanton and ravenous cuts into the federal workforce started to really bite, and it became painfully apparent that Trump’s chaotic, idiotic obsession with tariffs was rapidly eroding consumer, business, and investor sentiment. Consumer spending unexpectedly fell, manufacturing activity stagnated while prices rose, and the stock market plummeted as Trump and Melania’s meme coins rocked the crypto markets.
Since February 19th, the S&P 500 has fallen about 10 percent, almost to correction territory. The Nasdaq has slid 13 percent. More saliently for young men, Bitcoin has fallen nearly 25 percent from its high this year. Palantir is down 33 percent, Robinhood 40 percent, Reddit 45 percent, and Tesla 50 percent. In the wake of the election, young men rode these speculative and overpriced assets to ebullient highs, but such assets tend to fall hardest in bear market recessions, which the Trump/Musk administration appears to be driving the U.S. toward at ludicrous speed.
It’s possible that young men have looked at their Robinhood and Coinbase accounts and have reassessed their deal with Trump. In the latest J.L. Partners poll conducted last week, Trump’s support amongst young men collapsed. While Trump’s overall approval fell five points, his approval amongst 18- to 29-year-old men cratered by 19 points.
This is just one poll, of course, and polls are noisy. But it’s a stark – albeit early – sign that young men’s collective fling with Donald Trump could end up short-lived.
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