Young women preferred Harris to Trump by a 17-point margin: 58% to 41%. But young men preferred Trump by a 14-point margin: 56% to 42%.We generally ascribe this to the specific choices made by the Trump and Harris campaigns. Trump aligned himself with mixed martial arts, pro wrestling, and bro podcasters. Kamala Harris never went on Joe Rogan's podcast and focused her attention on winning women's votes.
But the campaign is over and Trumpism is still a sausage party.
Trump's poll numbers are beginning to decline -- but among women, they're already in the toilet. Trump isn't spending every day carefully targeting the male demographic, but men are still sustaining him.
Look at the numbers from a recent SurveyUSA poll. Trump's overall approval rating in this poll is 51%; disapproval is 45%. But there's a massive gender gap: Trump is at 62%-36% approval among men (+26) and at 40%-56% among women (-16) - a difference of 42 points.
In the same survey, Elon Musk's numbers are 52%-41% (+11) among men, 32%-57% (-25) among women. That's a 36-point gender gap.
A Quinnipiac poll in which Trump is in negative trritory overall (45%-49%) has a similar gender skew. Trump's job approval is 57%-38% (+19) among men, 34%-60% (-26) among women -- a 45-point gap. Men have a favorable opinnion of Musk, 49%-39% (+10); among women, his rating is an abysmal 28%-61% (-33) -- a 43-point gap.
On Trump's handling of the economy, men approve (55%-34%), while woman disapprove (33%-62%). There are similar gaps on every issue: foreign policy (54%-38% vs. 34%-58%), the federal workforce (53-39% vs. 29%-60%), the Gaza conflict (46%-41% vs. 31%-53%), the war in Ukraine (48%-34% vs. 32%-54%), and trade (54%-37% vs. 30%-60%).
MAGA is male.
Trump's poll numbers are dropping, and concerns about what Trump and Musk are doing is starting to make even Republican members of Congress sweat:
In an R+18 district: Speaking at a business luncheon yesterday in Westerville, Ohio, GOP Rep. Troy Balderson “described President Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders as ‘getting out of control’ .... [and] expressed some pushback to the idea of sole decision-making power lying with Trump and billionaire advisor Elon Musk,” the Columbus Dispatch’s Samantha Hendrickson reports. “‘Congress has to decide whether or not the Department of Education goes away,’ Balderson asserted. ‘Not the president, not Elon Musk.’”But notice that it's mostly women who cheer the (female) anti-Trump speaker at the beginning of this clip. It's mostly women who give her a standing ovation starting at 1:26:
In deep-red Georgia: Last night in Roswell, Georgia, an overflow crowd packed into a town hall forum for GOP Rep. Rich McCormick, barraging him with pointed questions and accusatory comments about DOGE’s cuts. His staff “seemed caught off guard by the massive crowd of hundreds that gathered,” reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein. (This is a district Trump carried by 22 points just three months ago.)
... “Attendees set the tone early, with one accusing McCormick of ‘doing us a disservice’ for supporting the budget-slashing initiatives by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency that have torn through all corners of federal government,” Bluestein reports.
The town hall crowd peppers Rep. Rich McCormick with boos and catcalls as he struggles to answer a pointed question from a resident who says she’s a descendant of Patrick Henry who pressed him on whether Trump was moving toward “tyranny.” #gapol https://t.co/gicXVC7AFJ pic.twitter.com/BkSIaxtgQb
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) February 21, 2025
What could persuade men, or at least some men, that the administration is bad? Maybe mistreatment of veterans? Some Republicans are worried about that:
Republican lawmakers are growing particularly uneasy with cuts impacting veterans, who are given preference in the federal hiring process and have been disproportionately affected by the dismissals. GOP members are also concerned that federal services for veterans could be affected.But do men care? Who do most American men think is a real man -- a soldier or Marine who lost a leg in Afghanistan and now works for the VA, or Elon Musk waving around a chainsaw? Deep down, I think most men in America would choose the chainsaw, just the way they voted for the draft dodger in the long, phallic tie who does the fist dance.
Republicans have quietly warned the White House to reinstate many of the 1,000 employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs who have been dismissed in recent days.
Senate Veterans Affairs Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said in an interview that he and his staff have been communicating their concerns with the White House legislative affairs team, along with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins.
“Certainly on the veterans side, we’re asking for information from the administration,” Moran said. “We are being reassured that no one at the VA who has any direct care responsibilities are being terminated or laid off, and we’re just looking for the positions and circumstances in which it’s occurring.”
Even in the worst-case scenario -- a severe recession or depression, Medicare and Social Security broken beyond repair, bird flu rampant, unsafe food in supermarkets, planes frequently falling from the sky -- I think men will abandon Trump last. That sucks, because they're pretty much all he's got now.
