The soaring youth turnout in Virginia for last Tuesday's election, where Democrat and governor-elect Abigail Spanberger won a decisive victory, shows that Gen Z men are beginning to question whether President Donald Trump can make life more affordable for them, reports Puck News writer Peter Hamby.
The election's "turnout had already surpassed 2024 presidential levels at all three of Virginia’s Tech’s campus precincts — a shocking threshold for an off-year election for governor," Hamby writes, adding that "youth turnout soared at William & Mary and James Madison University, too."
Virginia elections analyst Chaz Nuttycombe knew the election "was going to be a tsunami" when they saw voter turnout.
"There were a lot of activated younger Democrats who I think disliked Kamala Harris last year but came out for Spanberger," Nuttycombe tells Puck.
Spanberger's win, Hamby writes, "was just one on a blowout night for Democrats amid a national political environment that was even more toxic for Donald Trump and Republicans than most observers had believed," pointing to Democratic victories in New Jersey, New York and California.
Mamdani, Hamby notes, "probably cribbed most from Trump’s dude-targeting playbook."
Young women showed up and voted blue, Hamby notes, "reaffirming their position as the cornerstone of the Democratic base," but "the bigger storyline was the return of Gen Z men to the Democratic fold."
And while Trump narrowly won the young male vote in 2024, he writes, last Tuesday's data shifted the narrative.
John Della Volpe, the director of the Harvard Youth Poll and C.E.O. of SocialSphere, which studies youth voting patterns, says that this shift is due to Trump's increasing apathy towards Americans' problems.
“With young men in ’24, Trump and MAGA influencers spoke more directly to their concerns, and [young men] were more likely to think he would have a positive impact on their lives," Della Volpe says.
The optics of Trump's fixation on his multi-million dollar White House ballroom, however, forced young male voters to rethink that notion.
"He is not as in touch with these young voters as he was when he was campaigning,” Della Volpe says. “Democrats were the ones listening and connecting the dots.”
Young male Gen Z, Della Volpe says, are also concerned about the push for Artificial Intelligence.
"There is also huge concern right now about A.I. with young men, and that cuts across educational cohorts: Blue collar, white collar, college or not—everyone is concerned about instability in the workforce," he says.
"Young men moved decisively left," Della Volpe says because "the economy is still not working in their favor."
"Young men do not trust Trump anymore on the economy," Volpe says.
However, "just because young men voted for the Democrats this year doesn’t mean they are suddenly reliable Democratic voters once again," Hamby writes. "Like Latino voters, these days young men are firmly a swing bloc."
“It means they are available and they want to hear from you,” says Della Volpe.
Hamby notes that "while Spanberger and Sherrill didn’t lean into the podcast circuit like Mamdani, they shared with him a relentless commitment to talking about prices and affordability—not about free buses or taxing the rich, but groceries, electricity bills, and healthcare costs. They hammered the same message over and over again, no matter the venue."
Male Gen Z heard that message loud and clear as evidenced in last Tuesday's elections.
"If 20-something man in Virginia this year happened to hear a single stray comment about Spanberger, whether on YouTube or listening to a podcast in his car or anywhere in his crowded media diet, the campaign was simply maximizing the chance that the remark would be about the cost burdens of modern life—an implied reminder of Trump’s broken promises," Hamby says.