The white male vote and the 2024 election

background and talking points

Talking points/background about white male voters and the 2024 presidential election

By Jackson Katz, Ph.D.

1)    Kamala Harris’s choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her vice-presidential running mate is a great pick for many reasons. It appears that people at the highest level of the Democratic Party have finally accepted the fact that reaching out to white men is not just good politics — it’s crucial if they’re going to build a winning coalition. Walz is an experienced politician who holds liberal and progressive positions on issues and still wins elections in purple areas of the Midwest. He’s also a white man who understands how to speak to white men. He has exactly the sort of credentials necessary to do this. He served twenty-four years as a non-commissioned officer in the National Guard. The right knows how much masculinity cred this gives him with men – which is why they’re saying and doing whatever they can to attack his military record. He was a high school teacher and championship high school football coach. He hunts and fishes. And he’s been a strong supporter of women and women’s rights.

For two generations, the GOP has been able to run up votes among white male voters by calling the Dems “elitists” who look down on average people, especially white men. This won’t work with Walz, no matter how much they call him an “extremist radical” on Fox “News.” He’s also a happy warrior who smiles a lot and has a self-deprecating sense of humor, all of which gives him a winning political persona.

2)    The Democratic Party has performed poorly with white male voters in presidential elections for decades. This has finally (!) become a topic of mainstream political conversation, but it’s hardly a new problem. The gender gap has been a major feature of presidential voting since 1980, with men – especially white men -- voting disproportionately for the GOP, and women for the Dems. According to exit polls from 2020, white men voted for Trump over Biden 61-38%. The numbers for high-school educated white male voters were even more stark: 70%-28% for Trump.

In 2024, before Joe Biden dropped out of the race and was replaced by Kamala Harris, polling suggested he was poised to lose ground with Black and Latino male voters as well, especially young ones. Therefore it is crucial to understand that the Dems’ challenge with male voters in this election is not due solely to the fact that a woman of color is the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. The Dems’ problem with male voters runs much deeper than Kamala Harris’s gender and racial identities.

3)    The Democrats have been wildly ineffective at the job of messaging and outreach to men – especially white men. This goes back decades and is not primarily about policy. The overall Democratic policy agenda – while too timid and centrist for many liberals and progressives -- is far more responsive to the interests of working and middle-class men than that of the GOP, especially on issues related to “lunch-bucket” economics such as labor and worker’s rights, public investment as a stimulus for job creation, consumer rights, health care, Social Security, etc.

Progressives and Democrats need to communicate the idea to men – clearly and unequivocally – that they have better policy solutions than those of Trump and the MAGA-fied GOP.  The Walz VP pick is a big step in the right direction. But they also have to say, repeatedly and without equivocation, that they care about them and their struggles. This needs to be stated explicitly in public messaging and not merely implied, because voting choices in this era are often made less because of policy positions and more out of tribal identification and a feeling that your party/candidate cares about your class/race/sex.

Many white men – especially blue-collar white men -- feel that the Dems are “elitists” who look down on them, and care more about appearing “woke” than about the needs of average people. They see the Democrats as the “diversity” party, promoting the rights of women, immigrants, people of color – and an internationalist agenda that neglects the interests of (especially) white working-class men. Even though this is a caricature, the notion persists among large sectors of the American population that the Dems “don’t care about men,” a distorted perception that has been spoon-fed to them 24-7 for many years on conservative talk radio, Fox “News,” Christian media, YouTube, podcasts, and social media.

4)    Young male voters are not motivated by arguments for gender equity, or the desire to make history be electing the first woman president. It would be great if millions of young men were motivated to vote for Kamala Harris because she would be the first woman elected president. No doubt some young men are excited by this prospect. But according to available data, for most young male voters it’s not a winning argument.

Count me in as one of the many no-longer-young men who are excited about the prospect of Madam President -- and think it’s way overdue. Moreover, I have long believed the election of the first woman president – especially a committed feminist -- will transform the cultural zeitgeist more dramatically than most people imagine, leading to real progress in many areas of actual policy. Alas, survey data suggests there are better ways to win the support of young male voters than appeals to gender equity and justice. There is growing evidence that Black male voters in particular might be moving toward Harris because she is a Black woman, rather than simply because she is a woman.

According to research conducted July 9-23 by YouGov for the Young Men Research Initiative, (youngmenresearchinitiative.substack.com) young male voters aged 18-29, across a range of ethnic/racial identities, are much more likely to support Harris if they think her policies will be good for them and the country than they are to support her because she would be the first female president. Many other surveys have shown that the defense of abortion rights is a good issue for young male voters – especially if it’s framed as an issue of “freedom” from government coercion rather than a matter of women’s rights. Harris has been doing this very effectively in speeches for some time.

The broader (and obvious) point is that identity-based appeals (e.g. Men for Harris, White Dudes for Harris) have resonance with some men, but turns off others. Clearly, organizers and strategists need to pay close attention to these dynamics as they develop messaging and outreach strategies to men, especially low-engagement voters in battleground states.  

5)    Trump’s performance of “strongman” leadership resonates with many white men  because he successfully taps into their feelings of “aggrieved entitlement.” For these white men, appeals to support Kamala Harris because she’s a Black and Asian woman, or anything that sounds similarly identity-focused, are highly likely to fall flat. It’s important to remember that many working and middle-class white men are drawn to right-wing populism in the first place because they feel they are losing status in two key areas: 1) the U.S. has become increasingly diverse racially and ethnically, decentering whiteness, and 2) women’s advancement has threatened men’s authority in the family and the larger society.

Trump doesn’t accept these long-term historical shifts; he fights back. His supporters have been saying this almost from the moment he announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination in 2015: “He’s tough.” “He’s a counter-puncher.” “He doesn’t back down.” He also speaks directly to men – especially blue-collar white men – and tells them he sees them, respects them, and wants to help them achieve the American dream that has been taken from them. People who oppose Trump think he is a charlatan and a lying, amoral con man who says whatever he feels he needs to say in order to get ahead, however insincere or absurd it might be. This includes his disingenuous claims to care about the struggles of working and middle-class men and their families. Recall that his signature political achievements in office were standard fare for the corporate-friendly GOP: a huge tax cut for the wealthy, cuts in environmental regulations that hurt corporate profit margins, and the appointments of three Supreme Court justices who, throughout their careers, have consistently ruled in favor of business elites and the wealthy against the interests of workers and average Americans.

Nonetheless, Trump’s supporters continue to believe that while he might be a little “rough around the edges,” he’s an unfiltered, straight-talker who tells it like it is.  Even more importantly, he’s a “real man” who stands up for them. That is why, despite his myriad impeachments, scandals, and convictions, so many of them have stuck by him.

6)    The MAGA brand is identified with hypermasculine posturing and bravado. This was on full display during this summer’s Republican National Convention, which was a four-day spectacle and celebration of a cartoonish hypermasculinity. The posturing was over-the-top, but for anyone who’s been paying close attention to presidential campaigns over the past few decades, it should have come as no surprise that a political convention designed to showcase and promote MAGA values would more closely resemble a Wrestlemania event than a traditional political gathering.

The broader theme of the slickly produced, made-for-TV extravaganza was that the revitalization of the American dream depends upon the remasculinization of American men through the divinely inspired leadership of the MAGA king himself, and his newly elevated prince, Ohio Senator JD Vance. For anyone who hadn’t yet gotten the RNC’s central message that Real Men Vote Republican, the GOP distributed thousands of placards throughout the arena for delegates to wave that read, “Trump = Strength, Biden = Weakness.”

Another key theme of the RNC was that men who do not support Trump are not “real men,” something numerous right-wing figures on Fox News, talk radio, podcasts, and social media say regularly – especially after Trump’s remarkably self-aware and strong response to the assassination attempt in Butler, PA.  

7)    The GOP markets itself as the party of “real men” who have what it takes – including guns -- to protect their family and community in a dangerous world. The corresponding message to women – especially white women -- is that these “good men” are their strongest bulwark against the “bad men” who would do them harm. The appeal to men as protectors is also one of the most powerful undercurrents in the debate about gun safety policy, and a key reason why the issue is so emotional and tied to the identity of many gun owners. For many of them, the gun functions as both an instrument and symbol of their ability to protect their family and community.

The overarching message to white voters about violent crime – including white male voters -- is deeply and inexorably racialized. Trump’s rapid rise to political power was catalyzed by his willingness to abandon racist dog whistles and instead say the quiet part out loud. He took a big step in that direction when he falsely claimed that America’s first Black president, Barack Obama, was not born here and thus had no right to run for president. Then he sought to exploit the worst racialized fears of white Americans when he infamously strode down the escalator in Trump Tower in 2015 and decried the “rapists and murderers” coming across the border from Mexico.

Of course Trump didn’t invent the tactic of using racialized rhetoric about crime for political advantage. White American colonial leaders and politicians have been using this tactic since the 17^th century. Since the late 1960s, the GOP and affiliated groups have used thinly disguised and coded racist appeals to signal that they’re the “tough on crime” party that can help (mostly white) men fulfill their primary role of protector and defender. What is less frequently recognized in conventional political commentary is that the right frequently uses whites’ racialized fear of crime as a pretext to attack the masculinity of men to the left of center.

Along those lines, for several years right-wing pundits and other influencers in media have been warning that Joe Biden’s physical frailty and halting speech patterns supposedly made the US vulnerable to an “invasion” at the southern border and other threats to the homeland. The Republicans were ready once again to use this line of attack against Biden. Then he announced his withdrawal from the race, and vice-president and former prosecutor Kamala Harris emerged as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee. This made moot right-wing efforts to paint Biden as weak and not man enough for the job, and scrambled the politics.

But the idea of men-as-protectors is central to the GOP’s gendered appeal, so look for an onslaught of videos over the next three months that depict violence at 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, scenes of dark-skinned immigrants streaming across the border, and amplification of the rare but tragic incidents in which undocumented men murdered American citizens. The message to voters is clear: despite January 6^th and Trump’s many indictments and convictions, a vote for Trump-Vance is a vote for the masculine stability of law and order, versus a sense of chaos and vulnerability when the feminized Democrats are in charge.   

8)    The racial and gender politics of white men organizing around the issues of race, gender and the presidency are complex and potentially fraught. The politics of all this can be tricky. But men’s silence and retreat in the face of complexity and sensitivity – especially white men’s -- are not viable options at this historic moment. The emergence of White Dudes for Harris -- whose first event on YouTube on July 29 had a remarkable 200,000 viewers and raised over $4 million dollars -- has prompted a lively debate about the sensitivities involved when white men organize as white men who are advocates for racial and gender justice.

Clearly there are many reasons for these sensitivities, not the least of which is that historically, when white men have organized around matters of gender and race, they have often done so in the name of white male supremacy and other dangerous and destructive ideologies.

Nonetheless, one effect of the lack of organized representation of white men – or even men as men in general -- on the moderate, liberal, and progressive side is that – rightly or wrongly -- many men do not believe that the Democratic Party values their voice, or cares about their interests and struggles. Joan Walsh reported in The Nation that Working Families Party national director Maurice Mitchell, who is Black and was the second person to speak on the White Dudes call, said ‘We have a niche extremist MAGA movement that claims they speak for the majority of white men, but they don’t. I believe there is a silent majority of white men who don’t support MAGA, but MAGA is the only group speaking to them. What would happen if we tried to convince those men to organize as a bloc so they don’t get spoken for any more?”

I don’t know what would happen, but I know what could: millions of white men who have been drawn to the right in recent decades by identity-based appeals could begin to fall away from MAGA and rejoin the Democratic coalition, which could use the resultant electoral and political majorities to finally pass legislation that benefitted working and middle-class men and their families. Perhaps sensing the threat of this potential, the right has been all over social media ever since the Dudes event, mocking and dismissing the initiative, and impugning the “manhood” of those involved. Characteristically, Donald Trump, Jr. sneered on x (formerly Twitter), that the group should call itself “Cucks for Kamala.”

9)    A focus on outreach to male voters – especially white male voters – is not about appealing to “white knights” or “white saviors.” It does not necessarily come at the expense of historically marginalized groups. It does not mean that a historically privileged group once again receives undeserved attention. Quite the contrary – it is a vital component of any serious effort to increase the rights and opportunities of less powerful groups. Ultimately, it’s just smart politics. Since the 1980s, the Democratic Party has had a hard time assembling winning coalitions in part because they’ve consistently lost the white male vote, sometimes by massive margins. This has been true especially with regard to high school-educated white male voters, who have been voting Republican in overwhelming numbers for several decades.

As activists and pundits have been saying in recent days, if the Democrats can cut into the GOP’s large margins of victory with white male voters even by a few percentage points, they can not only win close elections. They can also help build strong and unbeatable majorities in the popular vote and the Electoral College, as well as help Democratic candidates in House and Senate races and all manner of down-ballot state elections. The result? They could then pass legislation that benefits tens of millions of working and middle-class families, such as paid family sick leave and child-care. Policies in those areas have traditionally been thought of as women’s issues, but are in fact family and community issues that will immeasurably improve men’s lives as well.    

10) The Dems need to recruit a wide variety of men who support Harris to be “trusted messengers” for the campaign. The concept of “trusted messengers” is common in public health campaigns and in consumer product advertising. It is especially necessary for Harris and the Democrats to have traditional types of men as “trusted messengers” in order to counteract persistent right-wing attacks on the “manhood” of moderate, liberal, and progressive men. They should include engineers, businessmen, doctors, and lawyers, but also blue collar tradesmen, former military and law enforcement, and retired athletes and others, of all racial and ethnic backgrounds.

The idea is for them to provide a “permission structure” for men who are anxious about openly supporting a woman candidate for president. It is already difficult for men who are insecure about their “manhood” status to publicly identify with the Democrats, especially when the conservative media politics and infotainment complex features relentless mockery of men who vote Democratic. The mockery and ridicule will only be magnified with a woman – Kamala Harris -- atop the ticket, especially with the excitement her candidacy has generated among women. In other words, by publicly declaring their support for Harris, these “trusted messengers” will make it easier for other men to do likewise.

11) A growing body of academic and journalistic research and analysis is available for anyone who’s interested in a deeper dive into this subject matter. More specifically, an outpouring of published works over the past decade (and earlier) has sought to understand and analyze the forces – both material and symbolic -- that have contributed to right-wing backlash to societal progress, and the rapid erosion of white male support for the Democratic Party over the past half-century.

Here is a partial list of books that address key aspects of this issue:

Trump Democrats, by Stephanie Muravchick and Jon Shields

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, by Arlie Hochschild

Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters are Turning Away from the Democratic Party, by Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol

Darkness Now Visible: Patriarchy’s Resurgence and Feminist Resistance, by Carol Gilligan and David Richards

Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, by Michael Kimmel

Healing from Hate: How Young Men Get Into – and Out Of – Violent Extremism, by Michael Kimmel

Man Enough: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity, by Jackson Katz

Honor Bound: How a Cultural Ideal Has Shaped the American Psyche, by Ryan Brown Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present, by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity, by Stephen Ducat

Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland, by Jonathan Metzl