Earlier this year, Julian Becerra, a 25-year-old in Florida, posted a video admitting something that some young American men would find hard enough to say to their friends, never mind the internet – he was wrong about supporting Donald Trump. “Not proud of it, man enough to say it,” he said, before tossing away his red “Make America Great Again” cap. In the comments, between people saying that they’ll “never forgive” Becerra or that it’s “too late now”, other young men admitted to feeling led astray too. It’s a sentiment that tracks across the President’s recent approval ratings: Trump is losing ground with gen Z men, who were one of his key demographics in 2024. So, where does that leave young American men politically?

In recent years, people have been scrambling to understand what is happening with young men. There’s the masculinity crisis, the widening gender divide, the male loneliness epidemic and the growing influence of the manosphere – the list goes on. But the 2024 election provided a clear snapshot of where young American men stood politically: they were shifting sharply to the right. Suddenly, there was hard data capturing the political polarisation that had long been brewing between gen Z men and women, the latter of whom still lean left. The results were surprising in one sense – young voters have generally favoured Democratic presidential candidates for decades – but they came as no shock to anyone who has spent more than five minutes in young male spaces.

For Becerra, who has voted for the President twice, Trump’s initial appeal was that he “wasn’t a politician”, which allowed him to be direct and unfiltered. “In the 2010s and even going into 2020, censorship was on the rise”, he says, and the country was “moving away from some of the values it was founded on.” Becerra felt like a rebel for supporting Trump in 2024, because this wasn’t “mainstream” at the time. Then the Epstein files came to light, and Becerra had a change of heart. “It creates a massive distrust for me in our political system in general,” he says. “If someone like Trump – let’s say he did have the best intentions – is completely swayed in a lot of the things he used to stand for, I think we’re going up against some pretty powerful forces.” 

Now that Becerra views Trump as a politician – as part of the system – he is no longer charmed by him. He is frustrated by the US’s continued ties with Israel and believes American money should be “going towards America”. But just because he no longer aligns with MAGA does not mean he plans to vote Democratic in the next election. Becerra is one of many young men who no longer see themselves reflected in the “puppeteers at the top” of either party. He still considers himself a conservative – his Instagram bio reads “Make men MEN again” – votes in the interests of “freedom” and thinks capitalism “works”. But he is also concerned about corruption in American politics and the thousands of innocent lives lost in “pointless wars”. “It’s a circus, and both parties are sitting up at the top and laughing,” he says.

Young men shifting to the right is not a phenomenon exclusive to the US – political polarisation between the genders has also been growing in South Korea, the UK, Germany and elsewhere around the world. But perhaps the growing regret among ex-MAGA bros offers a clue as to where Gen Z men may be headed next. There are multiple theories about what is driving the shift – most involve economic uncertainty and the internet – but in the US, at least, there is also a strong underlying desire to shake up the system. “A lot of the young men who swung right weren’t necessarily getting in the weeds of specific policy issues or poring through every detail of Project 2025,” says Charlie Sabgir, director of the Young Men Research Project. “Above all, they were looking for a change in the day-to-day living situation.”

“A lot of the young men who swung right weren’t necessarily getting in the weeds of specific policy issues or poring through every detail of Project 2025. Above all, they were looking for a change in the day-to-day living situation”

Sabgir says that the main political concerns for young men in 2024 remain much the same: the economy, particularly the cost of living, housing, and access to jobs. Generally speaking, economic issues are more salient than social ones, although international conflict and foreign policy have moved slightly up the hierarchy. In June, when Vox interviewed young men queueing outside Trump’s UFC event at the White House, three subjects kept coming up: the economy, Iran and Israel, and the Epstein files. As Americans begin to absorb the costs of Trump’s war with Iran – through public spending and rising petrol prices, alongside price increases linked to tariffs – some of the young men who swung right are becoming disenchanted with his administration.

Having initially been drawn to Trump because of their distrust of institutions, many young men now feel let down by his economic policies. Sabgir says that young people as a whole have soured on the administration faster and more sharply than any other demographic, largely because they tend to be more anti-establishment, less committed to a particular party and more politically independent. “This leaves them more open to depart from whoever they voted for and hope for a change,” he says. Michael Bland, executive director of Black Men Vote, describes this as an “election problem”, in which young people are drawn to anything that appears to challenge the status quo.

William, a 19-year-old from Portland, Oregon, who goes by “killersandlosers” on social media, never voted for Trump, but he did find him hilarious. He watched his press conferences like comedy shows. Before the president returned to office in 2025, William was hopeful that he might “shake things up”. That hope disappeared after Trump appointed Robert F Kennedy Jr and Pete Hegseth to his cabinet. “I think that there are a lot of people who are essentially politically homeless right now,” he says. “But, in my opinion, the right is still much ‘cooler’ than the left in pretty much every regard – the left looks so lame and since most of the guys I know don’t pay a lot of attention to politics, I can imagine a lot of people just voted based on vibes.” Campaign memes built around “Brat Summer”, he points out, were never going to appeal to most young men.

As William sees it, gen Z men’s swing towards Trump was driven less by the pull of the right than by a desire to push back against the left. But that could change. Of all the politicians across both parties, the only one who excites him now is Zohran Mamdani. Although William never voted for Trump himself, his enthusiasm suggests that Mamdani’s affordability agenda could appeal to some of the young men who swung right. Bernie Sanders, who campaigned on a similarly populist economic platform, also found strong support among young men. According to Bland, young Black men who voted for Trump want to be able to provide for their families, secure economic relief without relying on what they view as handouts, and find viable career pathways. Above all, he says, they want access to the America that was supposed to be built for everyone – a promise that has yet to be realised. “The Trump burnout is real, and I’m glad the bromance is over,” he says. “What keeps me hopeful is they [young men] are having the conversations and are engaged.”

The young men interviewed here have shown that they are willing to shift their allegiances and discard politicians they feel no longer serve their interests. This may be good news for the left, but it carries its own dangers. Dr Brendan K Hartman, who specialises in the social-emotional development and wellbeing of boys and men, says teenage boys are increasingly being drawn towards extremism and black-and-white thinking. “It’s harder to live in the grey of the nuance,” he says. “When we’re in survival mode, and it feels like a dog-eat-dog world, it’s also especially hard to counter the message of dominance of power.” The challenge, then, is to address the economic insecurity, political alienation and broader sense of neglect driving young men’s desire for such a drastic overhaul – before another hard-right populist steps in to fill the void.