Young Voters Broke For Democrats… But Pollsters Say The GOP Hasn’t Lost Them Forever

Voters under 30, who split roughly evenly between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in 2024, went about 7 in 10 for the Democratic candidate in their House races on Nov. 3, with about 3 in 10 backing the Republican, according to The AP Voter Poll.

Only about 1 in 10 voters in the Midterms were under 30, which the AP says limited the impact of the shift. But about 6 in 10 under-30 voters said one reason for their House vote was to express opposition to Trump, compared with about half of voters 30 to 44 and about 4 in 10 of those 45 and older. About half of voters under 30 said they were “angry” about the country’s direction, against about one-third of voters 65 and older.

Pollsters say young men are a big part of it. Rich Baris of Big Data Poll told the Epoch Times that male voters under 45 swung hard toward the Democrats, helped by low-propensity Millennial men. Many younger men who had believed in Trump’s promise were very disappointed by July, he said, over food prices, the cost of a home and the Iran war, whose effect on gas prices was “the cherry on top.”

Blake Neff of the Charlie Kirk Show said Turning Point’s chapter members were unhappy with the economy and the war. “They were told ‘no new wars’ in ’24 and then a new war happened, and it hasn’t gone great,” Neff said of the men who have defected. Baris added that the young men he interviewed “feel like Israel hijacked their presidency, their last chance to turn things around.”

NYU professor Scott Galloway suggested the explanation was economic on the Raging Moderates livestream the day after the vote.

“Young men go with the economy, and the economy flips back and forth,” he said, adding that they are “the swingest swingers in voting” and “vote mostly on economic issues.” Republicans, he said, are still seen as the better party on crime and immigration, but Democrats poll stronger on “empathy” and taxes. “They want to know who’s going to give them the prosperity that their parents had,” he said, arguing that young men are “focused on economics so they can form households.”

He called it “arguably the biggest swing we have seen in any cohort in recent history in an election.”

Vice President JD Vance reached the same diagnosis in a long post on X the day after the election. A pollster had told him before the vote that “a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys.” Afterward, Vance wrote, “The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.”

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was “composition” – whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was…

— JD Vance (@JDVance) November 4, 2026

Asked what would bring them back, the defectors in that pollster’s survey gave four answers, Vance said: “End the war,” “Focus on cost of living/inflation,” “Put America First” and “Change our relationship to Israel.” 

As we reported, Vance made no effort to soften it: “The reason we lost is the war,” he wrote.

Not everyone thinks the break is permanent. Jim Lee of Susquehanna Polling called Gen Z “the group that feels most betrayed by who Trump is today,” but he thinks the swing among young voters is temporary. “You could buy them for one election, but you can’t own them,” Lee said.