Look, politicians have tried to meet young men where they are for years and years.
Shock-jockin’, pickup-truckin’, trend-hoppin’ or video-game-streamin’ — they’re willing to do almost anything to reach them, even if it means pretending to know ball (because let’s face it, they do not). So when the political class again looked out and wondered where the young men were and how to get them to vote, the consultants knew just what to do: go to a conference.
The second annual Symposium on Young American Men took place in late September in a bright penthouse near Union Station in Washington. The top sponsors of the event were fraternities. A few panels were broadcast live on C-SPAN. Organizations tabling outside gave away baby-blue buttons (“Gender Equality for Men”), magazines featuring women in lingerie (“the conservative Cosmo”) and sheets stuffed with charts and data tables (“12 Areas of Male Disadvantage”).
Over two days, intellectuals and elected leaders discussed the issues fueling the “crisis among young men” — education, the economy, mental health and lack of community. A pollster laid out new data: Young male voters are back up for grabs! Pay attention to them!
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Young men probably won’t play a huge role in the midterm elections, several political operatives said, because they are, as a group, a relatively small and unreliable voting bloc. But they could have outsize influence in a bigger election with smaller margins.
President Donald Trump made massive gains among young men in 2024 — a 15-point swing from 2020 — because they believed he would improve the economy and their job prospects, according to a Tufts University analysis.
But those gains have disappeared, according to a new Cygnal poll released alongside the symposium. More young men now view the GOP unfavorably (49%) than favorably (40%), and among those who say they’re determined to vote, Democrats have a sizable lead (57% to 40%).
Now, Vice President JD Vance is embracing a 22-year-old evangelical with over a million followers on young men’s favorite internet platform (YouTube). And every Democrat potentially vying for the 2028 nomination is trying to do something:
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has enacted male-friendly policies; Maryland Gov. Wes Moore cozied up to sports teams; and Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Andy Beshear of Kentucky did podcasts with thought leaders such as the author Richard V. Reeves and NYU professor Scott Galloway on the struggles facing men and boys.
And Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) stopped by the symposium to discuss jobs and “making space for men.”
“Back in the day, I was like the only one,” Gallego said of Democrats concerned about young male voters. “Now it seems everyone every week is coming up with a new position, new idea, which is great.”
Republicans lost their 2024 gains among young men because the economy didn’t get better and the Trump administration’s foreign policy approach in Iran and Venezuela has been unpopular, in part because it has raised gas prices, according to lead Cygnal pollster Alex Tarascio.
During focus groups, Tarascio showed older Republicans data on the systemic problems facing younger Americans.
“They’ll say, ‘Totally, I see this, this is real,’” he said. Sometimes, their own children had delayed moving out of the house or having kids because it was too expensive. But at some point in every conversation, Tarascio said, they would revert to the avocado-toast ideology: “Well, you know, they just need to save their money a little bit more, and then they can afford a downpayment.”
The older Republican set didn’t “actually believe things are worse now,” he said.
The conversations reminded Tarascio of another finding: Even young men who identify as Republican believe the federal government should do more to help young people.
“For the Republican Party, they’re going to have an awakening at some point as these older, small-government ideological people die and the new cohort comes up,” he said.
But just saying the right words to appeal to men isn’t enough, according to Ellen Carmichael, whose firm, The Lafayette Company, organized the event. She argued some Democrats trying to appeal to young men come off as phony — like when a New York Times analysis found they were swearing a lot more.
“The right should not take them for granted, and the left should not condescend or cosplay,” she said. “Who’s actually going to meaningfully care about these people as human beings?”
Everyone broadly agreed that young men need help: They are lonely, feel purposeless and often believe they don’t have the power to change it. Gallego extolled the virtues of fraternities — he was in Sigma Chi at Harvard — as a haven for young men, and he co-sponsored a bill to prevent colleges and universities from penalizing or restricting students involved in single-sex social organizations.
“Setting up the environment where these men can meet and talk is important,” he said.
A week after the symposium, young men were back at the center of the news cycle. A former Cornell University student filed a lawsuit alleging she was gang-raped by members of the Chi Phi fraternity in 2024 and that the university failed to protect her. The Lafayette Company, which represents a variety of men’s groups and fraternities, has since signed on to do media relations work for the national Chi Phi organization. Chi Phi said in a statement that it moved quickly to expel those at Cornell “suspected of betraying the values of our brotherhood.”
Khanna was one of the few 2028 contenders to weigh in publicly on the case thus far, posting a video on social media decrying a “crisis of misogyny.” In a statement to The Washington Sun, Gallego called the alleged events at Cornell “horrific.”
“Women should feel safe on campus whether in class, at the dining hall, or at a party — no ‘if’s, ‘and’s’ or ‘buts’ about it,” he said.
Gallego, 46, was at the symposium last fall, when it was just a one-day event, and criticized members of his own party for underappreciating the value of having a father in a child’s life (he grew up without a dad) and said the broad application of the term “toxic masculinity” has “gone too far.” He championed a bill he co-sponsored that would create an Office of Men’s Health.
“It caused some controversy with former newscasters,” Gallego said, referring to online criticism from Katie Couric. “But it’s important.”
The moderator, political journalist Ben Jacobs, prodded Gallego to directly address Couric.
“Sen. Gallego, I know you said that you’re championing men’s health because you want to be a good father,” Couric had said of his legislation. “But I think one of the best ways to show up for your family is to ensure your daughter and wife have access to the same quality of care and information and research as you and your sons.”
“It’s not worth it,” Gallego said a couple times, turning the discussion back to the importance of male mentors and improving the economy for working-class families.
“The real buying power of the working man has declined tremendously over the last 40 years,” he said, comparing it to the downward trend of the average life expectancy of men. “Unless we change how men and women are paid, where they’re actually going to be able to make a living, spend time with their families and not be so stressed out all the time … then this will continue to happen.”
And then there was Khanna, 50, who said the way to win young men was actually about the economy.
“No war, no aid to Israel and actually caring about jobs here and communities here,” Khanna said of his pitch to young men. “We [need to] have a good jobs agenda so that young men have good jobs.”
Khanna, one of the most progressive members of his party, sat next to Grover Norquist, 69, a longtime anti-tax conservative activist, on a panel. It was the closest thing to a cage match you can get in downtown D.C. — well, besides the actual cage match held on the White House lawn. They sparred over whether the government should intervene to help rural communities abandoned by corporations before turning to whether taxes inhibit job creation.
California is “stealing” money from billionaires through higher property tax rates, Norquist said, which would “begin to hollow out” Silicon Valley.
“One-third of the wealth is in my district — literally of the country,” Khanna fired back, rattling off statistics and name-checking a couple famous AI executives. “The question is: Who is this country going to work for?”
“I used to live in Massachusetts, and that’s the attitude we had about Polaroid, which is now bankrupt,” Norquist said.
As Khanna left the stage, a man with white hair rushed up. He applauded one of Khanna’s old bills, introduced but never passed, to help reindustrialize the nation. The man urged Khanna to keep fighting, to keep pushing his ideas, because he believed those jobs were the future.
The way men were, he said, was the way men could be again.
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