Young Male Voters and the Growing MAGA Influence | Vanity Fair

The last place I expected to see a bobbing red sea of MAGA hats was on a college campus. But these are strange times. And a red tide is exactly what I witnessed this week at the University of Georgia.

If Donald Trump wins the presidency again, a big part of the coalition and the story will likely be the support he attracted, or failed to attract, among Gen Z voters, especially young men.

It’s conventional wisdom, and one firmly rooted in historical precedent, that college campuses tend to be hotbeds of liberalism. In the past few months, however, I have been encountering more and more evidence that something new is afoot within the cohort of young men, something that runs counter to the narrative. So I decided to go to a key swing state and check it out for myself. (I am currently producing a documentary about the impact of Gen Z on the 2024 election.)

On Tuesday, I attended a campus rally at the University of Georgia in Athens, sponsored by Turning Point USA and featuring its charismatic and controversial leader, Charlie Kirk, who, since he founded the organization in 2012, has been the tip of the spear when it comes to mobilizing young voters to the conservative cause.

On this occasion, his “You’re Being Brainwashed Tour” invited students to a plaza where he simply sat at a table and answered questions.

Notably, Kirk not only gladly answered hostile questions, but encouraged them, often asking Trump supporters to get out of the line so that unfriendlies could grill him. And he went nonstop for two hours. The plaza was so crowded, I had trouble moving through it. And he signed and tossed out red MAGA hats until he quickly ran out of the 2,500 that his team had brought along to distribute.

Kirk was, for the most part, firm but cordial. He expressed his points of view with a rapid-fire intensity, conviction, and clarity. And while he’s a partisan Trump advocate, he doesn’t succumb to hyperbole or convey false confidence. He also yields to obvious truths that might otherwise ruffle Trump surrogates. He acknowledges, for instance, that Trump is not going to win the Gen Z vote.

“It’s going to be hard for Trump to win on these campuses and get a majority,” Kirk concedes. “But I can say, confidently, we’re going to lose by less.”

Rally organizers with caps supporting Donald Trump.

What makes him so sure that things had shifted? “There is something profoundly interesting happening on these campuses,” he says. “I’ve been doing this for 12 years. This is not normal. The energy is off the charts. You have a younger generation, Gen Z, who experienced a lot of—they would say—lies and deceit during COVID, and a lot of their life being altered. There is this pent up ‘rebellion energy’ that has never come out.”

“Young men,” insists Kirk, who is 31, “are profoundly more conservative than people would have expected and, in fact, are the most conservative generation of young men in 50 years. They want to be part of a political movement that doesn’t hate them. Those are their words, not mine. The cultural blob of all left-wing influence has definitely had an undertone that if you’re a straight, white, Christian male, that there’s something wrong with you. Or you must apologize. Or you’re a colonizer.”

“Gen Z could impact this entire election,” Kirk asserts. “And it has received disproportionately little attention, considering [that fact].”

Well, yes and no. Lately, reams have been written about the inroads Trump has made when it comes to garnering expansive support among the young male electorate; Vanity Fair’s own Dan Adler recently reported on Trump’s influence over the Joe Rogan audience and the overall bro podcast ​set.

But Kirk’s point is that a rash of young male would-be voters—some disaffected, some adopting Trump’s macho posturing, some just awakening to how politics affects their day-to-day—are helping Trump cut into what former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel has warned is Kamala Harris’s sizable lead within the Gen Z community. Kirk puts it all on the table, weighing both sides.

“I think it’s going to be way closer than people think,” he maintains. “I think all this overly bullish stuff on the Trump side is mistaken. I think the abortion vote animates more people than they realize. I think there’s more Republican ‘bleed’”—meaning drop-off among GOP voters to the Harris camp—“than people will admit, especially in my home state of Arizona. I think the female vote is troublesome because women turn out more than men. And, finally, I think Democrats have a very good ground game. Their ground game is exemplary. That doesn’t mean I think Harris is going to win. I just think those things can chip away one point, two points, three points on the margins.”

In 2020, about one in 10 eligible voters were Gen Z. In this election, at least one in six will be. In early June, Joe Biden was winning this cohort by two points. Data released Tuesday by CNBC/Generation Lab shows Harris improving that advantage to 20 points, which is in line with Biden’s performance in 2020.

A leading polling authority on Gen Z voters, John Della Volpe, points out that if history is any guide, Democrats win when they garner 60% of the youth vote. Barack Obama won over this group by 66% in 2008 and 60% in 2012. Biden also drew 60% in 2020. In contrast, Hillary Clinton only managed to attract 55%; John Kerry 55%; and Al Gore 48%. The numbers speak for themselves.

Yet, while polls suggest that Harris leads the Gen Z contest overall—and is winning young women by 67% to 28%—Trump is winning Gen Z men by a factor of 58% to 37%. And that means that this is still a pretty even horse race. Getting to that magical 60% certainly isn’t in the bag.

You would think Harris (age 60), given her relative youth compared to Biden (81) and Trump (78), would enjoy a far greater advantage among all younger voters. But if Trump does manage to pull this one out, defying predictions from people like yours truly who believe that women will create a margin of victory for Harris, it may very well be because Trump—aided by young supporters like Kirk and company—received an unprecedented level of support among young men.

We will know soon enough. Which side will get a more decisive wave of young people to show up at the polls in the key swing states?

Perhaps President Obama said it best when addressing Gen Z voters head on. In a Tuesday interview with the NBA podcast The Young Man and the Three, he spoke about how he and Michelle advised their daughters about the importance of playing their part in a representative democracy. And he spoke directly, as he phrased it, to “particularly young men and young men of color. ”

The former president put it this way: “So, let me get this straight. You’re not gonna vote, which means you’re gonna let a bunch of old people decide your future. You wouldn’t do that about your music. You wouldn’t do that about your clothes. But you’re going to let them decide what your future, your potential careers, what the environment’s gonna look like? You’re gonna let them decide that? You’re just gonna opt out? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s not that hard to vote. Shoot, people vote for All-Star weekend…you can vote to decide who’s gonna represent you and our country.”

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