PJ Media readers, of course, heard about it first: We gave you a comprehensive breakdown of the Kamala Harris campaign autopsy last week. It took the rest of the media a few days to catch up, but it’s a helluva story. Perhaps the most important story in all of politics.
If you don’t know the data, then you don’t really know why Trump won.
All you have are biases, guesses, and opinions.
New York Times columnist Ezra Klein is a liberal. He’s very open about his political beliefs: He worked on the Howard Dean campaign and was a political commentator for MSNBC. On Klein’s podcast, he recently interviewed David Shor, the head of data science at Blue Rose Research, a Democratic polling firm that conducted the Harris autopsy.
Originally, his interview didn’t receive widespread coverage. When other outlets such as Fox News discovered it a few days later, outside interest began to heat up.
And that’s good. It was a fascinating conversation. Chockfull of info the GOP can exploit!
We’ll begin with the part that “shocked” Ezra Klein:
I find this part of this chart shocking. I sometimes talk about narrative violations, and if we knew anything about Donald Trump eight years ago, it was that young people didn’t like him. And Republicans had been maybe throwing away young people for generations in order to run up their margins among seniors.
But if you look at this chart, 75-year-old white men supported Kamala Harris at a significantly higher rate than 20-year-old white men.
… This chart shocks me. [emphasis added]
Equally shocking was the explanation of the (pro-Democrat) data scientist:
I agree. To me, this is the scariest chart in this entire presentation, and again, something I’m very surprised by.
At the bottom, we have age, and at the top, we have the gender gap and support for Kamala Harris, comparing women and men.
What you can see is that, for voters over 30, the gender gap was fairly stable at around 10 percent, which is roughly where it’s been in American politics.
… What’s crazy is that if you look at people under the age of 30, the gender gap has exploded. Eighteen-year-old men were 23 percentage points more likely to support Donald Trump than 18-year-old women, which is just completely unprecedented in American politics. [emphasis added]
Okay, the data pinpoints a mass exodus of young men from the Democratic Party. It’s absolutely 100% happening, and it seems to indicate a large-scale cultural shift.
Still, the data scientist and the New York Times writer were grasping at straws to determine the reason:
I think it’s still too early to say exactly what the cause is. What’s interesting, though, is that this is happening in other countries, as well. Obviously, different countries have different political systems, but I’ve seen similar patterns in Canada, the U.K. and Norway.
There’s a lot of research to do here, but it’s still very striking. It’s similar to how a lot of people talk about the Democratic young men problem — and it’s still somehow underrated, because the actual numbers are just a lot worse than people think. [emphasis added]
… I don’t think it’s just inflation or backlash against the incumbent governments, though I’m sure that’s part of the story, too.
When liberals fail to find a smoking gun, they bundle their theories together and throw them at a wall, hoping something will stick: Maybe it was COVID! Or #MeToo backlash! Or those dastardly influencers on the so-called “manosphere.”
KLEIN: I feel like the story you’re implying you believe here is that this polarization among young men and women is driven by young men who were in high school and online during Covid.
This was around the time when #MeToo was cresting, Jordan Peterson became a big figure and Andrew Tate was rising. You have what’s now called the manosphere.
But there’s a sense the Democratic Party is becoming much more a pro-women party and in some ways, sort of anti-young men. And that, in turn, had a huge effect on young men’s political opinions.
SHOR: I do want to stress that this seems to be a global phenomenon. And I don’t want to overcenter the specific things the Democratic Party has done but rather focus on the broader cultural shifts.
KLEIN: Peterson and Tate are global figures.
SHOR: Exactly. I agree with that. We’re in the midst of a big cultural change that I think people are really underestimating.
If you look at zoomers, there are some really interesting ways that they’re very different in the data. They’re much more likely than previous generations to say that making money is extremely important to them. If you look at their psychographic data, they have a lot higher levels of psychometric neuroticism and anxiety than the people before them.
If I were going to speculate, I’d say phones and social media have a lot to do with this. How that translates into partisan politics depends on what the parties do. But I think it’s a big shift. [emphasis added]
Klein and Shor are misdiagnosing the problem, confusing the ailment with the (alleged) solution: The digital popularity of Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate didn’t drive young men from the Democratic Party! Even if Peterson and Tate were ultra-feminist, pro-Harris activists, Donald Trump would’ve won by the exact same margins.
Peterson and Tate are preaching to young men who are already disaffected. Klein and Shor have it backward: It’d be like someone noticing a sales link between Band-Aids and kids getting hurt and then assuming that if you got rid of the Band-Aids, there’d be fewer injuries.
The truth is, people aren’t that complicated. We move towards pleasure and away from pain; we want to be around people who like us, value us, and believe in us.
But the Democrats don’t believe in young men. Instead, they “believe all women.” By contrast, young men are perceived as potential rapists, racists, predators, and bigots. Right out of the womb, girls are naturally good, but boys must be “reeducated” not to be so boyish.
Especially in government-run schools.
Because, if you haven’t noticed, young men are struggling. Compared to women, men are less likely to go to college and more likely to go to jail. They make less money, do worse academically, and have fewer opportunities.
The Republicans didn’t create this! It was purely the handiwork of Democrats.
Meanwhile, consider the MAGA pitch to men: You’ve got Donald Trump at UFC events, backslapping the baddest motherbleepers on the planet. When Trump was pierced by a bullet, he rose to his feet, raised his fist to the heavens, and yelled, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” And today, through DOGE and executive orders, he’s removing the obstacles, regulations, waste, and overhead that make life tougher for young men.
Liberals want easy answers — that young men were “tricked” by influencers like Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan. Or maybe a small tweak in the TikTok algorithm will bring the boys back to the Democratic Party. C’mon, Silicon Valley! Save us!
That’s unlikely.
Trump’s attitude, panache, and flair for drama helped seal the deal, but Trump was just a small reason why so many men migrated to MAGA. He absolutely helped, but it wasn’t all him.
Democratic Party policies, failures, and condescension are what drove young men away. It’s not a messaging problem; it’s a reality problem. You can’t keep asking someone to touch a hot stove, because eventually, he’ll learn to stay the hell away. It burns!
Until the Democrats stop burning men, they’ll continue to be the party of girls... and men in dresses.
Trump welcomed ‘em in after the Democrats pushed ‘em out. But if the Dems hadn’t pushed ‘em out, there’d be no one to welcome in!
Once again, the Democrats have put the donkey ahead of the cart.
One Last Thing: The Democrats are on the ropes, but make no mistake: The donkeys are still dangerous. 2025 will either go down in history as the year we finally Made America Great Again — or the year it all slipped through our fingers. We need your help to succeed! As a VIP member, you’ll receive exclusive access to all our family of sites (PJ Media, Townhall, RedState, twitchy, Hot Air, Bearing Arms): More stories, more videos, more content, more fun, more conservatism, more EVERYTHING! And if you CLICK HERE and use the promo code FIGHT you’ll receive a Trumpian 60% discount!
Thank you for your consideration!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member