The numbers don’t lie, and they’re stark enough to give any Democratic strategist nightmares. According to recent analysis by New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall, the Democratic Party lost ground in the 2024 election among almost all demographic groups, but all the defections had one thing in common: Democratic losses were significantly greater among men than among women.
To better understand how Democrats got to this point, what it is about Donald Trump that’s attracting men and what Democratic candidates are emerging at the moment to rectify the situation I visited with Lucas Holtz from the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way. Third Way has conducted detailed research to better understand this problem afflicting Democrats. Many of you will remember Lucas Holtz as my researcher at The Lincoln Project.
Lucas joined me for an interview to discuss what’s going on.
This problem isn’t just about white men—a demographic Democrats have long struggled with. Support for Democrats from 2020 to 2024 among young Black men dropped from 85 percent to 75 percent and support among young Latino men dropped from 63 percent to 47 percent.
Meanwhile, party identification among men aged 18-to-49 shifted from plus 3 points Democratic to plus 10 points Republican between 2016 and 2024.
Richard Reeves of the American Institute for Boys and Men told Edsall that “Democrats effectively ran as the Women’s Party,” creating a messaging problem that alienated male voters. Democrats “have a massive blind spot when it comes to male issues,” Reeves argued, suggesting the party failed to address concerns specific to men’s experiences.
The party’s response? A $20 million study called “Speaking with American Men” to examine how Democrats can better connect with young male voters. Early findings from focus groups reveal troubling perceptions: many young men think “neither party has our back,” view Democrats as “weak” while Republicans are seen as “strong,” and feel “invisible to the Democratic coalition”.
But the male voter problem is part of a broader crisis. Shane Goldmacher’s recent New York Times analysis of declining Democratic voter registration reveals that Democrats are “hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls.” Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between 2020 and 2024—a four-year swing totaling 4.5 million voters. Most strikingly, more than 60 percent of men who registered with a major party became Republicans in 2024.
If men at large continue to trend towards Republicans, the future of the party looks “bleak,” Edsall warns. The challenge isn’t just electoral—it’s existential. Democrats must grapple with whether their coalition can expand without fundamentally rethinking how they speak to and about masculinity in modern America.
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