Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions.
David: [00:00:00] Welcome to Outrage Overload, a Science podcast about outrage and lowering the temperature.
For decades, Democrats counted on generational replacement, a slow but steady shift in the electorate. As older conservatives were replaced by younger, more progressive voters. It was the foundation of the so-called emerging democratic majority theory, and for a while the trend seemed to hold, but something shifted.
Recent data show a widening gender gap among young voters. And it’s not just that young women are moving left, a significant number of young men are leaning right, or at least turning away from the political left.
And that’s what we’re going to talk about on this episode of the Outrage Overload Podcast. I’m your host, David Meyer, and in this episode we’re exploring the forces behind that trend. [00:01:00] Is this a short-term blip? Or a realignment that could reshape the future of American politics. What’s driving young men away from the left, and what does it reveal about our culture, our politics, and how each gender experiences this moment in history?
In the early two thousands, the idea that future demographics would inevitably favor Democrats rose to prominence. It was known as the emerging democratic majority theory after the 2002 book, by the same name. It argued that ongoing demographic shifts in the United States, particularly the growth among groups like young people, minorities, college educated professionals, and single women, would lead to a durable democratic electoral advantage.
It turned out real life didn’t necessarily support the theory, and in 20 15, 1 of the original co-authors, John Judas recanted his views from the original book, arguing that the long-term Democratic majority had given way to an unstable equilibrium. He highlighted that Hispanics and Asians were proving considerably [00:02:00] less democratic than he assumed, and crucially, that white working class voters were abandoning the Democratic party.
Despite all this, the demographics is destiny core idea, or at least a simplified version of it, persists as a meme or underlying assumption. For many people, particularly on the left, it’s a wishful belief that has shown surprising resilience. Subsequent political analysis focused on the idea that each successive generation of voters would become more left-leaning or at least more democratic in their party affiliation, and there’s some basis for it.
The folk wisdom that people become more conservative as they age is a longstanding idea. However, the data on this is mixed and nuanced, and many researchers argue that the effect is not as strong or universal as commonly believed. The impressionable years hypothesis suggest that political views formed in late adolescence and early adulthood, roughly 18 to 25, tend to be quite enduring.
We find that people largely [00:03:00] maintain the political identity they establish during this formative period. Pew Research has consistently shown that younger age cohorts are more democratic oriented than older ones. For instance, voters in their late teens and twenties, gen Z and thirties, millennials lean substantially democratic.
While older generations, baby boomers, silent generation tend to lean Republican. This pattern has become increasingly stark over the last couple of decades. And of course, there’s more to the story.
While Gen Z as a whole leans democratic, recent data suggests a growing gender gap. Within this generation, gen Z women are becoming more liberal and democratic. While Gen Z men show a notable shift towards Republican candidates and more conservative views, particularly on certain social issues, there’s ongoing debate on what’s driving this shift.
We’ll hear from three experts with some overlapping and some [00:04:00] competing theories. Angela Denker, whose book Disciples of White Jesus explores the intersection of faith and politics will shed light on how elements of Christian nationalism may be influencing young men’s political alignment. Mark Sutton, author of How Democrats Can Win Back Men will provide a strategic perspective on how democratic messaging and policy choices have contributed to a disconnect with mail voters.
We will also hear from Eric Kaufman, author of the Third Awoken, who attributes this trend to a perceived overreach of progressive cultural movements. It’s worth noting that Eric Kaufman’s views on gender and culture have sparked disagreement and are regarded as problematic by many, but we thought they were worth including, especially to help understand what some young men might be responding to.
Here’s Angela Denker
Angela Denker: In general, younger voters still are trending overall. Democratic. I think there was a reactionary response among some young voters and men in partic, young men in [00:05:00] particular, of saying, Hey, we don’t wanna be characterized as this extreme liberal generation. We want to say more about who we are in a nuanced way.
David: While one can never truly identify a trend, except in hindsight, the widening gender divide among younger voters is generally viewed by political scientists and analysts as more of a realignment than a temporary blip. Here’s Mark Sutton.
Mark Sutton: So the, the history of the gender gap is really fascinating, and in short, yes, in general it’s widening.
So in 1972, men and women voted basically the same for Richard Nixon and then Watergate happened, which I mean, doesn’t that seem kind of like a minor deal compared to some of the stuff going on today? But at the time, huge scandal broke trust in federal government, everyone voted about plus five for Jimmy Carter.
Both men and women voted kind of in lockstep, about plus five for Jimmy Carter. Then in 1980 is when really we saw the gender gap happen with Ronald Reagan. And Ronald [00:06:00] Reagan’s advisor was a guy named Richard Wirthlin. And Wirthlin, you know, was his advisor over multi-decade, going back to California all the way through the White House.
And he says something very fascinating. First of all, he’s the one credited with this term gender gap, uh, in the election. And he said. In 25 years, people often ask about the gender gap and why weren’t Republicans doing as well with women. But nobody ever asked why republicans were doing better among men.
Okay. And so that’s exactly, I think, uh, just a really insightful thing. The gender gap has generally. Held true. It was a little bit narrower when Bill Clinton ran, because Ross Perot siphoned off some of the men’s votes both times that Clinton, that Bill Clinton ran, and so it got a little bit narrower.
And then the last two elections has been pretty high again, depending exactly which polls you used. And, but in 2016 and 2020 we’re [00:07:00] generally considered the two largest gender gaps to date, and this year might be even larger.
David: Although specific election outcomes can cause fluctuations, the underlying trends appear to be deepening and are driven by fundamental shifts in social values, cultural narratives, and media consumption.
The data, particularly since 2016, suggests young women are becoming significantly more liberal, while young men have either stayed relatively stable or even move to the right on certain issues. Kaufman takes a more critical view of progressive norms, which stands in contrast to what we heard from Angela Denker, who focuses on care, community, and empathy.
You’ll hear that tension as we go.
Eric Kaufmann: If you ask a question like, do you, do you support or oppose political correctness? Uh, you see an enormous gender gap on that. And, and, and actually the, the voting gender gap is, I think, underpinned by these cultural war attitude, gender gaps, and those show up in all data that we’ve seen.
And so, yeah, what’s going [00:08:00] on? I think this is more a story about women, younger women moving left. You know, certainly attitudinally, it’s more a, a, a story about younger women moving towards the radical left than younger men moving towards the right.
David: If the story of young women is one of political awakening and progressive alignment, the story of young men may be something else entirely less about ideological movement and more about a deepening sense of alienation.
While some interpret this as a backlash or right word shift, others see it as a reflection of broader struggles, economic insecurity, cultural displacement, and the unraveling of traditional masculine roles.
Angela Denker has spent years listening to men at the intersection of faith, identity, and politics. In the wake of a politically motivated shooting in Minnesota, she reflects on the pressures facing men today and the dangerous ways those pressures can sometimes be [00:09:00] expressed.
Angela Denker: We’re talking today in the aftermath of these horrible political assassinations here in Minnesota, and we’re just starting to learn a little bit more about the shooters motivations. But I am seeing some of the trends that I saw in my book, especially with not only his. Attraction to Christian nationalism, but also, you know, this sense that he had failed economically as a provider for his family.
He had five children. And so when you have these dual messages of that masculinity is necessarily violent, that Christianity calls men to be violent, to defend the teaching. As they, um, perceive of the faith specifically for this person among around being anti-abortion. But then when you couple that with this idea that men are supposed to be financial providers in an economy where it’s very [00:10:00] difficult to provide for a family on a single income anymore, especially without inherited wealth, you end up with this crisis and not to take away from the individual.
Evil choices of this shooter, but also to recognize the conditions under which, um, masculinity is in crisis in many ways. And if we produce only this sense that men can only find value either in being some sort of violent warrior or being a wealthy provider. Our economy and our culture is not set up for that.
And so it leads itself into where we see rising rates of depression, rising rates of suicide, and this really heartbreaking statistic at the center of all that is that white men are both most likely to be the perpetrators of mass shootings and also most likely to die by suicide.
David: Mark Sutton sees [00:11:00] this as a quiet but profound shift, not just in how men are viewed, but in where they’re allowed to belong.
Mark Sutton: There. There is an issue with young men having a sense of belonging and have a male space anymore. There used to be men’s groups. They were cool, you know, they were, and it was understood that, you know, sometimes guys wanna hang out and do guy things, and sometimes women wanna hang out, you know? With, and that’s okay.
And we can have spaces for different people and a lot of men feel like that. What happened was because some of the male spaces were thought to be more exclusive. I mean, if you take Augusta Country Club as like the prime example, like that’s not just a local guy. Country club, a local guy golf course, right?
That’s like prestigious. So like, hey, we can’t have all this prestigious stuff that excludes women. That’s not fair. But I think we went so far that we went to the point where never could you have a space where it was just men. But [00:12:00] all women’s spaces are okay because they’re the disadvantaged group historically.
Therefore, they deserve to have their own spaces. But because men were advantaged, which is also a simpl. Look back at history, which I don’t totally agree with, but the the thinking is, oh, therefore, any of those spaces are therefore exclusionary and therefore wrong. And so a lot of guys thinking, what, what can I do here?
David: Angela Danker sees hope here and fathers showing up with vulnerability in men choosing presence over power, and in a growing willingness to rethink what strength really looks like.
Angela Denker: There’s some really great work being done around caregiving and understanding the importance and value that caregiving has in the society, and opening space to see men in caregiving roles and how important that is.
And I think that’s a really beautiful thing to see. You know, one of my favorite. [00:13:00] Things about going different places, whether it’s churches or schools or community events to talk about. My book is having these young dads come up to me. I just had a dad come up to me, he last weekend at church, he has, he has three boys, and he said, Hey, I just finished listening to your audio book.
I am, you know, so encouraged and motivated now to share with my boys. And so I think just. Again, that comfort in even having these conversations, a, a willingness to learn and to say, you know, maybe some of the things that I’ve taken this first gut reaction, maybe I can take a step back from that and look at a different way of doing things.
Just this willingness to have some humility. To, to be wrong. I mean, that is just a first step. And as a Lutheran theologically, that’s what we call the first use of the law is just to have that initial first feeling of, wow, I, I need some help from God. I think if a lot of men, particularly men in [00:14:00] power, I mean, can you imagine if, you know men in power throughout the world, Vladimir Putin, uh, net, Yahoo Trump, if they all were like, had this moment of, oh, maybe I’m wrong about this, I could do this differently, uh, that could be really, really changing for our globe.
David: But as some men begin to embrace new roles with openness and humility, they’re not always finding recognition. Or encouragement from the political institutions that claim to champion equity. In fact, some argue that the modern left for all its focus on inclusion, often overlooks the struggles of men and boys altogether.
Mark Sutton pointed to a revealing detail in the Democratic Party’s own platform.
Mark Sutton: Here’s a classic example of what I call the Democratic disconnect in the Democratic national. Party platform, which was released at the DNCI did a word count. ’cause again, I’m a data guy. That’s what I like to do. Two word counts, but the word women appears in that women and girls appears in that document [00:15:00] 82 times.
The word men and boys total four time, actually, I don’t think boys appears at all. And of the word men that appears four times. Three times is just in a men and women’s statement. And one time is just discussing how Trump hired more men, judges and women judges, which is AEG legitimate point. And I, you know, that’s great.
Let’s talk about, you know, equity of new judges. Absolutely. But it’s not a supportive point for many boys. Right? So, you know, I, I’m not saying that every. You know, 21-year-old voter guy out there has looked up the DNC platform and say, Hey, they’re not talking to me. It’s not applied to me. But that sentiment filters down throughout everything the Democratic party does
David: at the same time.
Sweeping narratives, especially those crafted in media and political echo chambers, often obscure more than they reveal.
Angela Denker: One of the unfortunate parts about our, our media culture today is that it tends to lend itself to soundbites, right? And it misses, you know, the nuance among what’s really [00:16:00] happening.
And certainly I think there’s been. A real crisis of misunderstanding of Gen Z. You know, I think that there was a lot of sort of putting them on a pedestal and saying, oh my gosh. You know, especially you would hear among like Democratic talking points, oh, gen Z is gonna save us. And no generation likes to be told who they are without the opportunity to say, you know, this is, this is really who we are.
So I think there’s assessed some of that in the 2024 election, especially around young men.
David: Beneath generational divides and electoral shifts lies something even more elemental, A clash over meaning, morality and what’s considered sacred in our culture. For some, the modern progressive worldview isn’t just a set of values, it’s a moral framework that defines who must be protected, who can be criticized, and who must stay silent.
Eric Kaufman argues that this moral code often unspoken, placed by the logic of religion and punishes those [00:17:00] who break its taboos.
Eric Kaufmann: It is essentially that there are the sacred, the Holy Trinity is race, gender, sexuality, and they, you have groups which are up and down a totem pole of sanctification, indigenous and black at the top, and, and women are maybe a little further down.
Trans would be above women, you know, and then you have white males at the bottom of the poll. You have to defer to those. In a progressive stack or a privilege walk, you have to stand behind those who have more privilege or oppression points. The idea that you might. Uh, criticize a group that is above you in the pecking order.
A sacred group, you know, just means that you, you have essentially insulted the prophet. You’ve kind of insulted the gods, and there’s that, you know, the whole religion revolves around the sacred, the sacredness of. These historically marginalized groups that, that’s how I define [00:18:00] woke in one sentence. The making sacred of historically marginalized race, gender, and sexual minorities.
So if you insult the sacred, that’s true in any religion. You know, if, if you were to take the Buddha off, off a pedestal and, and throw it on the ground, you know, this would be, you know, just seen as the height of, you know, the worst thing you could possibly do in a society. And that’s, I think, where the.
The virulence of the reaction comes from, is that how, how dare you, how dare you trample on a sacred God? It’s the same reaction. So a sort of very, sort of uncompromising, zero tolerance, no debate style stance to perspectives that that. Cross it’s, it’s red lines and, and those that are guilty of this kind of blasphemy, we might call it, are, are, are really, it’s no holds barred when it comes to their going after their reputation.
And the idea of forgiveness is, is pretty difficult as well. So I think that’s really where [00:19:00] the kind of. Unforgiving nature, I guess, of this ideology comes in is, is very much that it, it goes for the jugular when it comes to people’s reputations and careers and, and doesn’t seem to have any sense of redemption or empathy for, you know, I guess the transgressor or whoever’s deemed to be the transgressor.
David: Angela Ker sees a culture that’s made real strides in expanding the possibilities for femininity, but hasn’t yet offered men the same space to grow, to feel, or to redefine what it means to be strong.
Angela Denker: We have had this increased sort of cultural space for what it can look like to be feminine in many ways.
I mean, I say this. You know, as someone who still as a pastor is subject to many of the traditional constraints around what women are supposed to be like, but we have had increased space for saying, you know, girls can be strong, girls can be assertive. There’s been an attempt, at least, certainly culturally, [00:20:00] we haven’t had at least that same attempt to be made for men.
For men to be more sensitive, for men to be more vulnerable. You still see, you know, even in things like Disney movies, there’s not a lot of space for an increased understanding around what a positive vision of masculinity can look like.
David: Mark Sutton reminds us this isn’t just a white male story.
Mark Sutton: In terms of the voting data, there’s a gender gap that goes across all races.
For instance, black male voters are less likely to vote democrat than black women voters. That’s, you know, somewhere between 10 and 15%. That’s the same gap among white men. That’s the same gap among Latino men. It’s the same gap among Asian men. So the, the, the gender gap, you know, it’s not just a white guy thing.
David: Nowhere are these cultural tensions more visible or more personal than in our schools? Once places have shared purpose, classrooms have become contested [00:21:00] ground where debates over identity, values, and belonging play out in real time and caught in the middle are the teachers tasked not only with educating, but navigating a minefield of political and cultural expectations.
Angela Denka reflects on what’s being lost in the process.
Angela Denker: Unfortunately the schools have become a battleground. And the heartbreaking thing about that as someone who comes from a family of public school teachers is that what’s losing out as we have these culture war battles happening in schools, what what’s losing out is teachers get caught in the middle and they have all these different directives and very little of it has to do with just trusting them to say, Hey, how do you.
Teach academics. How do you create an environment for kids where they can learn effectively?
David: Beneath the political fights, over curriculum and classroom control, there’s a quieter struggle about how we teach boys to understand themselves. [00:22:00] For generations, emotional expressions in voice was channeled through a narrow script.
One more strength, met silence, and vulnerability. Found no place, but that script is being questioned.
Angela Denker: My dad was one of seven kids. He had a few, couple of older brothers that he really looked up to. He was a college football player, and my dad has just been struck by, you know, as I talk about the ways that boys were socialized to not show emotion that often the only acceptable emotion is anger.
So if you’re sad, if you’re left out, if you’re betrayed, if you’re embarrassed. Any emotion, grief gets channeled only into anger. And my dad, you know, who is not someone who shows emotion and not someone who likes to talk about feelings, he has said, wow, this is really how I was raised. I, I totally resonate with this.
And I think just having that realization. For men, even [00:23:00] men who are in like their dad, like my dad, their sixties, seventies, eighties. Having that realization, it’s, it’s really critical for them then to be able to say to their grandkids, to their kids, to young men and boys in their lives, Hey, I wanna offer you a different opportunity.
Tell me how you’re feeling. You know, when they see their grandsons or sons crying, not initially to be like, Hey, stop crying boys. Don’t cry. But to create more space for. For all different expressions of masculinity,
David: creating space for emotional expression, and rethinking. Masculinity isn’t just about personal growth, it’s about survival.
When we ask men to show up to be better, to do more for others, but ignore their struggles and silence their pain, the cost can be devastating. Mark Sutton points to one of the darkest and most overlooked facts in our public discourse.
Mark Sutton: If you’re pointing to men and saying, Hey, do this for someone else and we’re not gonna listen to your needs at all.
We’re not, [00:24:00] we don’t care. The fact, did you hear one candidate from either party this entire election season, mention the fact that men are dying 5.9 years earlier than women. I mean, it’s it. Even Harvard Magazine came out and said, Hey. This is an issue that we need to investigate because men are dying sooner and we don’t really know why this is happening.
I didn’t hear it mentioned once by either party in the entire election.
David: The shift among young men may feel sudden, but Mark Sutton sees it as part of a longer quieter drift that’s been unfolding for some time.
Mark Sutton: You know, the Democratic disconnect, again, it, it goes across all demographics, and we’re seeing it mostly young among young men because they’re the last group of men to sort of shift over.
Like we’ve seen the older groups of men gradually moving more and more Republican, and this is only the latest shift of men moving more Republican. That’s got people freaked out all of a sudden. [00:25:00] But this has been happening for a while, so it’s, it’s not, it’s not a brand new thing, it’s just new among the younger people.
David: Har Kaufman offers a more provocative interpretation, one that links political alignment, not just to gender, but to how different groups respond to shifting cultural norms. It’s a view many will disagree with, but it reflects a real and growing perception that the institutions shaping our society.
Education, media and even morality have changed in ways that alienate some while affirming others.
Eric Kaufmann: And the thing that’s very important to, to remember is, of course this gender gap is new. Uh, that, that, if you look at American data on freshmen entering the university system, which they’ve been collecting since 1970 at the Higher Education Research Institute, there was really no gender gap in politics between 18-year-old men and 18-year-old women, between 1970 and 2000.
Four, [00:26:00] it starts to slowly emerge in 2004, but it doesn’t really expand until we get into the 2010s, uh, in a big way. And it’s now sort of 15 points. So whatever this is, it’s not something that’s always been there. It’s, it’s a new thing. And that’s why I think a quick attempt to say, oh, women are more empathetic, they’re more caring.
Or, or maybe this is about feminism and women liking femin. I think that that’s a little bit too simple because the question is then why wouldn’t we see these patterns in the 1980s? And, and so I think what I, the way I see it is women tend to conform to whatever the high culture or the culture that they receive in institutions like schools and universities.
And, and maybe that’s also true of, uh, popular culture. Um, whereas men are more likely to be contrarians and free thinkers and non-conformists. So I think that’s. One of the major reasons behind this, it’s also about [00:27:00] shifts that have occurred in the dominant ideology from an ideology that was more around patriotism and religion and, and perhaps even individual freedom.
In institutions really shifting in a massive way towards being critical of the country’s history critical of, uh, religion and established, uh, gender norms. And that’s something that’s now much more overt. Uh, so this diatribe against whiteness against, uh, you know, settler colonialism, racism, whatever, that’s something that they think is moral and virtuous, and so they’re gonna uphold.
Women will uphold those virtues ’cause they see them as the right thing to do, and I think men are more likely to rebel against that.
David: We’ve looked at big question about political shifts, identity and the stories we tell about men and meaning in America. But not every answer has to come from the top down.
Sometimes the work starts smaller, more personal, closer to home. [00:28:00]
Angela Denker: I think we’ve, we’ve done a lot of messaging within the American church of telling pastors whose churches are small, that somehow they’re failing and we’ve, we’ve adapted this corporate mindset to church that it needs to be bigger and stronger.
And so I think that not only churches, but you know, all sort of faith-based communities, all sort of small organizations don’t think that your impact doesn’t matter because you’re small. I think that’s. Smaller organizations are actually more adept at being able to create these kind of relationships and communities that that matter.
I actually had, when I was pastoring in Chicago, I remember having a meeting with a pastor from Willow Creek, you know, one of the original mega churches, and he was even telling me, you know, I. In many ways, I’m sort of jealous of the ability that you have as a small church to create community in ways that I can’t.
So I, I wanna encourage people in that sense, uh, within families and just, you know, a lot of these solutions, [00:29:00] they’re not gonna be policy solutions. They’re not going to be large scale national solutions, but the local is really, really important here.
David: This isn’t just about politics or demographics, it’s about the deeper currents shaping how we live and what we value.
Because when we frame everything in terms of power control and who’s winning, we lose something.
Angela Denker: How have we created a society in which people can’t admit they’re wrong and why? I think a lot of it. You know, Jesus talked about money a lot. A lot of it is this, this adoration of accumulation of wealth and power, and that is such at the heart of so much of the fragility of, of our, of our humanity and unwillingness to really look at.
You know, a bigger motivation than just, just wealth. But how about love? How about kindness? How about community? I [00:30:00] think we’re gonna need more of those values even more going forward as more and more people in America are living in poverty.
David: So where does that leave us? The widening gender gap in Gen Z isn’t just a political curiosity. It’s a challenge to our democratic wellbeing. We have to confront questions of masculinity, economic security, and belonging in real substantive ways. Right now, the loudest answers, many young men here come from the manosphere and online influencers who promise, belonging, purpose, and a clear identity, but only if you fit the mold.
That movement builds its strength on tight ingroup loyalty, often defining itself against an outgroup. That is portrayed as hostile, dangerous, or unworthy. It’s easy to see why this resonates with some young men. It offers simple answers to complex problems, but those answers come at a high [00:31:00] cost, both for the individuals involved and for the health of a democratic society.
It can deepen division and exclusion, erode democratic norms and feed cycles of misinformation and even radicalization. On the other hand, the political left’s focus on ideological purity has created an atmosphere where young men feel constantly scrutinized or prejudged and ultimately alienated conversations about gender, power and identity.
While important can sometimes come across as accusatory. For young men who are uncertain about their place in a changing culture, it can feel less like an invitation and more like a rejection. If we want a healthy democracy, we need better options for men. Spaces where they can find meaning, purpose, and belonging without the corrosive side effects.
’cause this isn’t just about politics, it’s about what kind of society we want for the future. The left has work to do, especially in listening. The right is seizing the moment, but not solving it. And if we want a democracy [00:32:00] that works, we need to look not just at what’s happening, but why. This isn’t a neat story.
It doesn’t tie up with a bow. It’s complicated. Real still unfolding, so I’ll end where we began. How does a healthy society engage young men? What do they need? What do we owe them, and what kind of future are we inviting them into? The answers won’t come from outrage, but maybe they start with listening.
Many thanks to Angela Denker, Mark Sutton and Eric Kaufman. Angela Danker’s book is Disciples of White Jesus, the [00:33:00] radicalization of American Boyhood, and you can learn more@angeladanker.com. Mark Sutton’s book is How Democrats Can Win Back Men, and you can learn more@marksutton.com. Eric Kaufman’s book is The Third Awakening, a 12 point plan for rolling back progressive extremism.
These books are available online at the usual large retailer. However, if you’re looking for a good reason to get outta the house, I’m sure your local bookseller could use your support and would love to help you find them.
That is it for this episode of the Outrage Overload Podcast. For links to everything we talked about on this episode, go to outrage overload.net. If something in this episode sparked a thought or maybe even lit a fire, I’d love to hear from you. You can leave a voice message or even schedule a quick one-on-one chat right from our contact page.At outrage [00:34:00] overload.net/contact. If you found this episode valuable, please share it or leave a review. It really helps. Thanks for listening, and I’ll catch you next time.