Masculinity politics: How Donald Trump is courting the bro vote
By John Branch
Las Vegas: On a sweltering Saturday in the suburbs of Las Vegas, inside a cool casino miles from the Strip, about 100 people lined up to see the Nelk Boys. Most of the fans were young men, in their 20s, there to meet their favourite crew of YouTube pranksters and podcasters. Two young women, in short shorts and tight tanks, handed out Happy Dad hard seltzers, part of the Nelk Boys’ growing line of merchandise.
Masculinity pitch: Workers move a portrait of former president Donald Trump by the artist Scott LoBaido at a rally in Wildwood Beach, New Jersey.Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times
Hours later, the Nelk Boys were inside a packed T-Mobile Arena, in the heart of the city, as Dana White, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, welcomed a sellout crowd to the latest UFC event. Donald Trump Jr was sitting cageside.
About two weeks later, White introduced former president Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention, where Senator JD Vance of Ohio was announced as Trump’s running mate. The Nelk Boys popped up there, too. Soon, they interviewed Vance on their Full Send podcast.
These repeated collisions of testosterone-fuelled orbits are a campaign strategy, not a coincidence.
At a time of an immense gender gap in politics among young people – women leaning left, men leaning right – the Trump campaign has been aggressively courting what might be called the bro vote, the frat-boy flank. It’s a slice of 18 to 29-year-olds that has long been regarded as unreliable and unreachable but that Republicans believe may just swing the election this year.
To find them, Trump and his allies have been exploring deep into the universe – a manoverse – of social media stars with male-centric audiences: the Nelk Boys, White and UFC, Dave Portnoy and his Barstool Sports media network, YouTubers like Jake and Logan Paul, podcasters like Theo Von and streamers like Adin Ross.
The Nelk Boys, internet celebrities who support former President Donald Trump and who announced a $US20 million registration drive to get more young men to vote, play in a pool, in Encinitas, California.Credit: Michelle Groskopf/The New York Times
These figures have become a generation’s Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Rush Limbaugh, but without the obvious political shroud. They are just guys having a good time, talking about sports, gambling, partying – and, more than ever, presidential politics.
The Nelk Boys have played golf with Trump, been on Air Force One and visited Mar-a-Lago. They have had the former president on their podcast twice. They are sometimes mentioned by him in his stump speeches – a reference that is likely to go over the heads of older attendees but not over those of the young men in the audience.
Maybe you did not hear the podcast or see it on YouTube. Perhaps you have never heard of the Nelk Boys, the Paul brothers or Portnoy.
But millions of others have. Most of them are young men who might vote, and if they do, might have a major influence on who wins.
The Bro Vote
In the college town of Bozeman, Montana, thousands of people in Trump T-shirts and hats lined up to enter a rally for the former president August 9. Many of them were young men. And most flashed smiles of recognition when the subject of the Nelk Boys was raised.
Among them were Louis Wagner-Lang and Van Ricker, both 21-year-old seniors at Montana State University, and Ricker’s 23-year-old brother, Charlie Ricker.
“The Nelk Boys and politics go hand in hand,” Van Ricker said. “Social media has blown up at the same time politics is blowing up.”
Louis Wagner-Lang, left, and Van Ricker, seniors at Montana State University, with a Trump flag in a park in Bozeman, Montana, this month.Credit: Louise Johns/The New York Times
They noted the Tesla Cybertruck that Ross, an internet celebrity with millions of followers, had given Trump during a livestream a couple of days earlier. They said they followed political happenings through the Nelk Boys and others.
“Kind of like older people do with the news,” Charlie Ricker said.
They appreciate the informal format of the podcasts, they said, without the slick network veneer of punditry.
“They’re so straightforward,” Wagner-Lang said. “They say something, and you think, ‘That makes a lot of sense’.”
The three young men detailed their concerns about the country: housing costs, grocery prices, the border. They said Trump fed into a sense that men, especially white men like them, had been cast as villains, when really all they wanted was to be able to provide for their future families.
Male voters among the supporters at former president Donald Trump’s rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, this month.Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times
Masculinity politics
Every four years, campaigns and political analysts slice the electorate into tiny subgroups that they believe may swing the vote. Suburban mothers in Michigan. Retirees in Arizona. Latinos in Nevada. Black voters in Georgia.
But the gender gap is a megatrend spanning across swing states and racial groups. And it is most prominent among young voters. In a series of New York Times/Siena College polls in six swing states this month, young men favoured Trump by 13 points, while young women favoured Harris by 38 points, a 51-point gap.
John Della Volpe, the director of polling for the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, has found a similar divide in his surveys.
“Young men tell me that they’re thinking about what it means to be masculine, what it means to be grown up,” Della Volpe said. “Many of them saw Trump as someone who could be their version of masculinity.”
Those potential voters, some voting for the first time, follow Trump more for his personality than his policies, Della Volpe said. They see him speaking against political correctness and absorbing waves of attacks, from high-minded criticism and court cases to an assassination attempt.
The question is whether Trump can lure young men to the ballot box. There is reason for scepticism: New York Times/Siena College surveys show that about a third of young men who say they plan to vote for Trump did not vote in 2020. Young men also report they are less likely to vote than older voters.
Of the young men who do show up to vote, Della Volpe noted that the youngest of them – first-time voters – seem more likely to vote for Trump.
“The first-time voter was in middle school when Trump came on the scene in 2015, 2016,” Della Volpe said. “They see him more as an antihero than as a villain.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.