Young voters showed up for the 2024 election in a historic way. A voter demographic that has predominantly voted Democrat for decades showed unprecedented support for the Republican Party and President Donald Trump.

One of the driving forces behind this shift: young men.

Youth voter turnout increased this past general election cycle, with 18-29 year-olds making up 16 percent of voters in 2024 compared to 13 percent in 2020.

However, in October 2024, the Harvard Youth Poll found the gender gap between voters aged 18-29 widened by more than double, increasing from eight in spring 2024 to 20 in September 2024. Former Vice President Kamala Harris was found to have led young women voters by 30 points.

One of the driving factors behind the growing rift between Generation Z men and women is a new wave of social media content, from weight- lifting videos and dieting to far-right or conservative rhetoric, which has gained the attention of many young men across the country. What all these videos have in common is themes of masculinity and dominance, whether that be in the gym, the office, or romantic relationships.

Kelly Kadera, an associate professor of political science at the University of Iowa, said Trump and those he surrounds himself with, like Elon Musk, head of the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, Vice President JD Vance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have attracted the group of young male voters who identify with “alpha male” culture and more traditional masculinity.

“A lot of emphasis on winning in business, a lot of emphasis on pushing this narrative around just kind of being macho and tough, right?” Kadera said. “A lot of the policies they espouse kind of echo these same themes, especially in the way they frame them.”

Content creators such as Andrew Tate, Ben Shapiro, and Joe Rogan are also doubling down on Trump and the “macho men” of the right. Much of this pro-masculinity content has appeared on podcasts such as “The Joe Rogan Experience” and “The Ben Shapiro Show,” whose hosts, both of whom hold conservative values, have praised President Trump over the past decade. Rogan hosted Trump on his podcast, as did popular YouTuber Logan Paul, who both have a large following of Gen-Z-aged men. Rogan has also had Musk on the show multiple times.

Some of the more alt-right ideas pushed by these creators have driven a significant wedge between young men and women socially, just as much as politically. Gendered topics became a top issue for many young women who overwhelmingly voted for Harris, with 50 percent of young white women saying they’d vote for Harris and 70 percent of non-white women, according to the Harvard Youth Poll.

In contrast to much of the anti-woman messaging spread by figures like Tate, a self-proclaimed misogynist, or other conservatives who don’t believe in a woman’s right to choose, a top issue for many women in the 2024 election was reproductive health care, which Harris emphasized throughout the majority of her short campaign.

Kadera said the divide between genders concerning reproductive rights is due, in part, to young men feeling neglected or pushed aside as women have hit milestones, gaining more rights in the workplace and the home over the past few decades.

“It’s not the guys who are foregoing relationships. It’s the women that are foregoing relationships, and they’re saying, ‘I don’t want to be in a relationship where somebody has really traditional views. They’re not going to treat me well. They’re going to put all these extra burdens on me,’” Kadera said.

Young women are also drifting away from young men, UI political science graduate student and teaching assistant Brody DeBettignies said, because of women’s willingness to identify as liberals and feminists, while those labels are much more stigmatized for men. He said the liberal ideas are especially rejected by the young men who feel disaffected and blame their loneliness on women not pursuing sexual or romantic relationships with them.

“Patriarchal perspectives are really growing amongst Gen Z men,” DeBettignies said. “Gen Z men were found to have more patriarchal views than even Boomers. So, I think a lot of this redefining masculinity, this kind of harkening back to these traditional standards that folks like Trump and Musk are espousing, are part of that calculation.”

Young men’s following of Trump and his squad of conservative bros and social media figures has shown its presence on campus at the UI. Kadera, who teaches an international relations class, said she’s had several male students cite Rogan as a peer-reviewed source when handing in academic essays.

“That’s not an academic source, but that’s really very real. It’s very real to them, right?” Kadera said.

Iowa students speak on masculinity

Though first-year student and Iowa Young Americans for Freedom Vice President Hale Halvorson has only been on campus for a few months, he believes students subconsciously submit to masculine ideas and try to align with them.

For Halvorson, masculinity is a mix of physical and mental traits. Competitiveness, physical strength, and gentlemanliness are just some aspects of masculinity to him. The way men use these masculine traits indicates whether masculinity is positive or negative, he said.

“I think men in general have been told that any sign of aggression or competitiveness or the capacity for violence — not necessarily committing violence but the capacity for it — they were told that these are toxic traits,” Halvorson said. “I think that men are kind of tired of being told that their desires for competitiveness are a bad thing. And I think when you look at more right-leaning politicians, you don’t quite get that as much.”

Halvorson used the example of a video of U.S. Secretary of Defense Hegseth lifting weights as a display of masculinity that is positive and could inspire other men to mirror his actions. He also listed podcaster Joe Rogan and his involvement in UFC fighting as a person men might admire and aspire to be like.

“I don’t think many people are going to say, ‘Oh, Joe Rogan leans to the right, so I’m going to vote right,’” Halvorson said. “I think that it could have an impact of, ‘I’m going to look at this issue differently because Rogan thinks X.’ I think it could have an impact on them, maybe just looking at an issue differently but not necessarily changing their mind.”

In Halvorson’s opinion, masculinity turns toxic when men do not have an outlet or way to express themselves.

Traditional methods of expression, like being chivalrous, have been taken away from men in recent years because some women no longer want to be on the receiving end of gentlemanly actions, like door-opening, leading them to take extreme measures to prove their manliness, he said.

“They don’t have to be a gentleman anymore, so they don’t need to do anything,” Halvorson said. “Young men, they’ve run out of ways to be masculine. They don’t have the gentleman aspect, and they don’t have the competitive-driven aspect, either. So, I think it kind of leaves them without a way to express themselves, [and] it leads to them saying, ‘Oh, I need to show that somehow I’m a man,’ [and] do something to show that they’re strong.”

When it comes to male loneliness, Halvorson believes the trend could play a role in how people lean politically. He said while men crave respect from other men, he thinks they want the respect of women first.

“I would say men only really need respect and support from one woman, and that woman is their wife, or hopefully their future wife,” Halvorson said. “I think a solid or a supportive wife who helps a man is the greatest thing that a man can have. Once that spot is filled, they would need more respect from other men.”

For Jaden Bartlett, a UI fourth-year student and former executive director of the nonpartisan voter registration and education organization Hawk the Vote, masculinity is less physical and more mental, including having inner confidence and groundedness.

“The mainstream view [of] masculinity is like street fighting, fist fighting, type of grounding yourself,” Bartlett said. “I actually think that it’s the opposite of really what masculinity is, which is being able to have emotional intelligence and understand your emotions and respond in ways that are not aggravating and critical in that you’re able to critically analyze situations and not just be enslaved to your emotions.”

Bartlett said in his experience, masculinity becomes negative when it is an identity a person is trying to convince others they have, whether it be through physical display or the way one talks about other groups of people.

“I think the most obvious example is when you hear the ways that it’s normalized for a lot of men to talk about women … trying to convince others that they’re a real man because of how they’re choosing to speak about other people,” Bartlett said. “And that, to me, is the biggest indicator of you may not be as confident in your masculinity as you’re putting off because that’s what comes through in how they talk.”

As for relationships, Bartlett thinks people see getting a girlfriend, boyfriend, or partner as a way for their lives to feel complete.

“That mindset impacts probably a lot more than they think, and that’s probably why they feel the need to maybe turn to more aggressive means when they’re not receiving any luck in their romantic interests,” Bartlett said.

He said he believes men care about what women and men think about them but crave the affirmations of men.

The desire for those affirmations can lead to men viewing themselves in the context of other men and how they are performing, Bartlett said.

“I think that they value that affirmation more than they actually value treating the people they’re pursuing well,” Bartlett said. “That’s why you see men behaving so poorly a lot of the time in romantic settings, because they are really benefiting more from the affirmation that they receive because of it rather than the actual relationship. Even if that’s something maybe they don’t realize up front, it might be more of a subconscious thing.”

As a left-leaning political science major, Bartlett said the way to bring right-leaning men who might be falling into toxic masculinity traits is to reframe what masculinity looks like and the way it can work in politics.

“You need to recruit people to the cause by showing them why and convincing them that this is the way to build a respectable, empathetic society. It’s by giving people autonomy and not by subjecting them and perpetuating harmful things like misogyny and sexism,” Bartlett said. “That starts with redefining the way we view masculinity.”