Andrew Bolt: Donald Trump’s victory shows there’s no shame in wanting male voters

Donald Trump’s election victory is a reminder that the male vote also counts and isn’t something politicians should be ashamed of chasing.

Donald Trump has done men a favour by reminding our journalists and politicians that men matter, too. Their votes also count and aren’t an embarrassment.

Trump won in part by chasing the “bro vote” in a way that would have had him damned here as a misogynist.

It worked. He won the votes of 56 per cent of men under 30, but only 40 per cent of young women.

Here, that would be declared shameful. A political leader with more support from men than women is said to have a “women problem”, not a male advantage.

The Sydney Morning Herald, for instance, declared then opposition leader Tony Abbott had a “women problem”, not that the Gillard Labor government had a “man problem”.

That didn’t stop Abbott from winning the next election, but the stink stuck. The Liberals seemed as ashamed as anyone to be preferred by more men, and vowed to do better.

Donald Trump proved he didn’t have a woman problem, he had a male advantage. Picture: AFP

Yet we read the Liberals still have an “ongoing ‘woman problem’” (Crikey) and this “women problem is writ large” (Guardian Australia), with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton blamed personally for allegedly having “a problem with professional women” (Teal independent Zali Steggall).

It’s as if a man’s vote is somehow dirty, or worth less than a woman’s.

After all, an Australia Institute exit survey of voters at the last federal election said the male vote for Labor was two percentage points lower than the female one, and the male deficit even worse for the Greens, which had 12 per cent of the women’s vote but just 9 of the males’, but I’ve seen no agonising over how the Left is turning off men. How it’s feminising too much.

Trump, typically, rejected this sorry-to-be-masculine nonsense. With him, it was cool again to be male. In fact, the more testosterone the better.

Trump got Dana White, boss of the blood-sport Ultimate Fighting Championship, to campaign with him.

He also went on the bro-friendly podcast of Joe Rogan, winning 47 million views, while Kamala Harris refused and went on the female-friendly Call Her Daddy, watched by just 813,000.

Trump, guided by 18-year-old son Barron, also showed up on Six Feet Under, a podcast by wrestler Mark Calaway. Imagine the fuss if Peter Dutton did something like that.

Talk about being allergic to men. But then comes Trump, celebrating masculinity, then appointing the first woman to be chief of staff in the White House.

Think it could catch on here?

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Donald Trump’s victory shows there’s no shame in wanting male voters