The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Young MAGA Men Are Turning on Trump: Pollster

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

John Della Volpe, Polling Director at the Harvard Kennedy School, joins Joanna Coles to break down the dramatic shift in young male voters, once Trump’s strongest base. From Charlie Kirk’s legacy to the collapse of Trump’s net favorable rating among young men, Della Volpe explains how inflation, chaos, and the unmet promise to release the Epstein files are reshaping politics. They also weigh in on Turning Point USA’s new leadership, the rise of faith communities, and the anti-establishment mood driving 2026 and 2028. Can Democrats turn this disillusionment into an advantage, and is Trump’s hold on young men slipping for good? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There's one person that we know does concern Donald Trump and certainly undermines him, and that's Jeffrey Epstein, the specter of Jeffrey Epstein from beyond the grave, at one point his best friend before they had a falling out. Does his name ever come up when you're talking to young people? It did. It came up. We did a focus group this past weekend. Basically, two promises that this young man are remembered, right?

One is, are you going to kind of give me a fighting chance, right, to live my best life? And, you know, are you going to release the Epstein files? Literally, that is what he said. Those two things. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And today we're going to be talking about young men and how important they were in helping Donald Trump get elected and how they feel about him now, 10 months into his Trump 2.0.

Who else to talk about this with, but John Della Volpe. You may remember he came on to the podcast in the summer shedding light about poll numbers. He is the director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard. And he is here brimming with all the latest poll numbers and deep, deep insight into what young men in particular are feeling about their place in America today. So no more time to waste. John De LaVolpe. Let's get into it. So John, we haven't spoken since the death of Charlie Kirk.

What have you been up to? I've been on the road as much as I possibly can. I mean, I'm on campus, you know, one or two days a week. But to do my job well, Joanna, I need to be out to America, right? So I don't know. I've been to Atlanta, St. Louis, Denver, a bunch of other places, listening and talking to people. And there's been some significant reflections post-Charlie Kirk. But really, I think what I'm picking up is this strong feeling that the system is just broken.

It's not working. Charlie Kirk was a vehicle for many young people. But there's an opportunity I'm hearing and picking up in America for more people to do more listening, to empower people who want to be a part of politics and trying to save this democracy. Do you think that Turning Point USA is going to have the same impact with a woman at its head? Charlie Kirk was a charismatic leader. He was also a young man. Is it likely that Erica Kirk can inspire the same kind of connection that her late husband did? Well, I wouldn't rule anything out.

We find that if you take a step back, right, that younger men in many cases are most, some younger men, right, were connected to Kirk. But a lot of other younger men were connected to one of the most elderly politicians in America today, Bernie Sanders, right? So it's not always like a one-to-one younger men, you know, connect with only other younger men who look like them, right? So I wouldn't rule out the fact that younger men can be kind of attracted to other kind of prominent figures who may not be reflecting their specific identity, right? What's more important than that? Do you think they can, I mean, can you give me examples of where they've related to a woman in this sort of situation.

Some of AOC's supporters, some of her strongest supporters are younger men. So the question is, can younger conservative men, okay, be attracted to Erica Kirk? That's a different question, okay?

So, so what does she represent? Does she represent having a space where, younger people can ask difficult questions, okay? And perhaps she won't likely have the same approach that he had, but could she still create that space where younger people feel comfortable asking questions? Charlie Kirk, you know, wasn't Charlie Kirk, you know, 10 years ago when he started, right? He was a frustrated young high school student, right, who wanted to create community and wanted to find other young conservative, kind of religious, faithful people,

who he could spend time with, which ultimately grew into one of the most significant political movements, you know, in the century, I think, okay? So it doesn't necessarily need to be the same playbook, but what it needs to be, I think, to attract any younger person around politics today, because there is such disdain for institutions, okay, is we need to collectively find places where younger people find community. where there is a shared culture, which ultimately can be developed into, you know, political positions, ideology organizing. My point here is that that can happen on the right. It can happen on the left. And there are more people on the left whose values align with kind of progressive ideology, but they don't have that space.

So I wrote a piece showing in the New York Times just a couple of days after Kirk's assassination, and I kind of broke it out. And I said, there are four or five steps, I think, that are worth studying that made Kirk Kirk, that helped elect the President of the United States. It was hard work. He was engaging. The right was engaging. And whether, again, his widow and his colleagues can take it to the right, that's one thing, okay?

But my point is there should be an opportunity to do the same thing on the left. And that's what I've been waiting for for decades. Well, what is the oligarchy tour then? Both AOC and Bernie Sanders are charismatic leaders. Haven't they created a space? They've created a movement, but it's different, I think, because it's a campaign. It's still about politics first, okay? And what Kirk did, okay, was create spaces outside of politics. Now, everyone wants to be talking about oligarchy 24, 7, 365, okay? They want to be talking about their day-to-day life. That's what I find in every single focus group room that I enter. People seem to be nervous when we walk in thinking it's going to be a political debate or quiz or something.

But when we end up just asking about how their days going, what's a good day, what stresses them out, what their life is like, what we don't understand, they feel empowered and they ask me when they can do this again. Those are the kinds of spaces I'm talking about, okay, where they're based upon community and culture. And then you get to talking about the oligarchs. You get to talking about, you know, why the system is, in their view, kind of preventing them from living their best life, perhaps that their lives that their parents, you know, led just 25 or so years ago, okay? My point is that Kirk led with culture first, with community first, and then politics followed. And I do think that there's an opportunity on the left, AOC, Sanders. We're certainly seeing this in New York City right now with Mondami. I think Mondami perhaps has as much of an ability as anyone I've seen to actually kind of extend his appeal in this conversation beyond just an election into something bigger.

that gives people kind of a stake and makes people feel heard, and that's important. Is this the sort of place that traditionally churches or mosques or temples would have played in people's lives? And then COVID sort of slowed down what was already a dwindling of people going to these places. And now people are still looking for the same things that they used to talk about in church or in mosques or temples, but they don't physically turn up at them anymore. They go to the gym on a Sunday morning or a Friday night instead. Yes, and this is not just a post-COVID five-year phenomenon. This is a decades-long phenomenon from, I think, one of the most important sociologists,

you know, in our history, Robert Pundum, talked about probably two decades ago in Bollong alone, right? It's how we're losing a social capital in connection to our friends or our neighbors, our fellow citizens, because he argued after the Second World War, we moved out to suburbs. A condition was on. We weren't walking. We weren't enjoying each other's company in bowling alleys and clubs and those sorts of things. So this has been decades, I think, in the making. But I think the really interesting and really good news is as, Again, someone who cares about reconnecting social fabric is actually a return to church, to temple, to mosque.

In fact, specifically among younger people. In fact, there's been a lot of research just in the last couple of years. There are actually more members of millennial generation and Gen Z attending services than Jet Xers and Baby Boomers. So that's something to keep a close eye on. And I've actually spent some time actually talking with folks in just the last couple of months about this very subject, about the role of religion and faith and showing up to a service or, you know, amusing apps and television, etc. And what I'm hearing is it's actually a place to disconnect, right? and to be presence. And what's interesting, I think, about this generation is there is this return to traditional religion.

And part of that, I think, is an antidote to the overwhelming stress that people feel when they're connected to their phones, right? And that by definition is a place you can't do that. You need to see each other and be present. And it's a trend worth picking up. It's more, I think, prevalent on the Charlie Kirk side of the political spectrum, but it's not, I think we're seeing similar interest in rebuilding faith communities on the left as well. Okay, super interesting. And possibly a very positive sign for full society, people understanding that the smartphone isolates them and craving to get back to companies. and actually being in person with people.

So what are the polls telling you right now about where in particular young men are? We've talked before about young men being such an important constituency for Donald Trump to get elected. How are they feeling one year in, or I guess it's 10 months into his actual rule, but it's a year since the election? We're all familiar with those traditional questions or do you're you disapprove, Fave, unfave, right track, wrong track. The question that I ask on a monthly basis, in a monthly poll I do at my company's Socialist fear,

is, I think, more direct, which is, is Donald Trump having a positive or a negative impact on your life? Okay? Or no difference. And what we found in January, 10 days or so before the inauguration, we found among younger men a majority, 55% having positive impacts.

Okay. And most of that obviously was around feeling heard and the potential for economic strength and kind of a return for younger men feeling like they could be the providers that they want to be. Okay. That was 55%. Right. And push back against DEI and the fear of cancellation for, what you actually think.

Exactly. All of those things. All of those things. Okay. Only 22% said negative, more than 2 to 1. Okay. The last wave of this survey that I did, it was just less than a month ago,

was end of September, and the 55% number went to 31%. Wow, that's a big draw. Less than a third say he's having a positive impact on their life. Okay. And 43% say it's negative. Okay. So the way we think about this is in January, he had a plus 33, okay?

33 points net positive impact. Today, minus 12. Minus 12. That's a 45 point shift, okay, in nine months. Is that the biggest shift you've ever seen? That seems pretty dramatic. It's up there. I'd tell you something, women, you know, shifted 41 points.

They were a net zero, okay, as many thought positive as negative, and now it's 18 positive impact, 59 negative impacts. What is the reason for that? Why are they feeling more negative than they were just before the inauguration? I think it is just really simple, which is every time they walk out of their house or their apartment, if they're lucky to have one, okay, everything costs more than a day, a year ago. Right. Everything cost more than a year ago. When I looked at the overall feelings of the economy, I looked at the economist UGov survey over the weekend. And, you know, a majority of all Americans, the highest number in the last year, think the economy is off on the wrong track. And we can see that reflected in everybody, specifically young. younger people, there are 10 points more likely today than when Biden was in office a year ago

to say that the economy is off a long track. So so much of it is driven by that one. And also, I think, they're looking at the East Room. They're looking at Venezuela. They're looking at a myriad of these other issues. And they're seeing through them, and they believe it's cynical. We know, we ask these kinds of questions in the polling. You know, from the National Guard in Washington, D.C., through some of these other issues,

they feel like they're basically an abstraction from what distraction, from what is the reason that so many younger men voted for him in the first place. Ultimately, he promised to help them be a better provider, and many are beginning to feel betrayed. So really, young men are impacted by the demolition of the East Wing of the White House? John, just hold on one second. We're going to take a message from our sponsors. And we're back with John Delavolpe from the Harvard Institute of Politics.

I think that's just the latest in a string of what they see is distractions from President Trump doing what he promised younger people to do, right, which is to improve the economy so they themselves could be better providers for themselves and the people that they care about. and they gave him some slack. We talked, you know, last time we were on the pod together, we talked about the slack that younger people were giving him, giving him some time, give him, you know, some opportunity to get his team in place, to see the effect of the tariffs, et cetera. But I think that time for many young people is kind of running out for him. You know, he needs to begin to deliver on the core promise.

And when you have only 31% of younger men, 31% of younger men saying he's making their life better, I can't think of a worse number for him right now. I can't think of a worse number for him right now. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean, though, that the 69% who think that there's been no impact or it's negative are voting for Democrats. That's the different dynamic in this cycle compared to his first term, I think, you know, this point in 2017. That's a different dynamic. And Democrats cannot make the mistake that just because they disapprove, just because they think Trump is actually hurting them financially, that they're going to, you know, end up voting in large numbers for Democrats. Outside of New York

City, you know, in a week or so from now, I don't see that happening at this moment. Are they impacted at all, or are you getting feedback from them on the government shutdown. We're one month in now, and it feels like the most under-talked about government shutdown, certainly in living memory. Yeah, I mean, I just think there's exhaustion. You know, I was on the road doing focus groups in the earliest days of that shutdown. It was just exhaustion. And that both, there wasn't like a big surprise, that they blame essentially both parties and the system for doing this. I don't think it's a subject, I don't think it came up over the weekend during my focus

groups. It's not a subject that I'm picking up or hearing from the rank and file people that I, that I talked to at this point. If anything, it drives people to kind of the anti-establishment pathway of trying to make change. I don't think they see at this point the folks I'm talking about, I'm sure we can find a poll that shows Democrats are winning, other Republicans are winning. I don't think that matters. I think that the shutdown is doing grave damage to further damage to institutions, Congress, Washington,

politics, government. That's the real damage. And it's driving people outside of the system. And that's something that I'm not sure either leader of both parties really fully appreciates. So you're hearing negatives on Donald Trump, but you're not hearing much positive about the Democrats. If you were advising the Democrats, what would you suggest they do to counteract this? I think what you said, Joanna, was an understatement when you said you're not hearing much positive about Democrats. So one of my favorite questions asking focus groups was, you know, if the parties were people, who would they be? Okay. What would they look like? Okay. If they showed up in a bar, if they showed up, you know, in whatever. What an interesting question. I wish I'd met you when I was a college because I would love to have been involved in something like this.

This was a young man said this just a couple days ago. He said, without hesitation, he said, Democrat is the HR department. It's the human resource department. Okay. They act like they really care about you, but they actually work. for the man. They actually work for the company. Think about that, right? Who wants to be visited by the HR department? It's never good news, right? If you're going to get a raise or a promotion, the boss is going to come in, not the HR department, right? The HR apartment is going to, like, they kind of grind you down with policy or

telling you something that needs to be changed, needs to be changed. to be adapted to not a conversation you really ever want to have or a person to necessarily be around. And no offense, Andy, the great HR people out there, but that's the vibe that younger people are feeling about the Democrat Party right now. I know. I was feeling slightly defensive about our HR person, who is a great contributor to the Daily Beast, I would say. Lisa Marie, if you're listening to this, I'm giving you a shout out. But it was one of the criticisms of Carmelah Harris, right, that she appeared to be a scold. And there's a you're always nervous when the HR department shows up that you've inadvertently offended somebody

by saying something that you hadn't thought twice about. And that, I think, is what the Democrats have been wrestling with a bit, this sense that we are all on the edge of offending someone else and being told off for it. Exactly. And then the other piece, okay, is we heard this about both Democrats and Republicans, that if they walked into a room, they would, actually be wearing one of those NASCAR type, you know, sweaters, right? Or, you know, or uniforms where you have your corporate logos, okay, you know, a fix to every part of your jacket or your sweater or your shirt, representing all the people who own a piece of you, okay?

And that exact metaphor was used for both the Democrats as well as the Republicans. So there's just not a lot of distance, I think, in terms of, quote, the oligarchy. Younger people are seeing both parties writ large driven by them. And what I think a lot of folks don't perhaps appreciate is younger people, that's the reaction. You need to kind of break that image of Democrats if you're going to have a meaningful conversation about what the future looks like. This is a party, this is a group of voters, I think, who are more rational, more pragmatic, perhaps than we might appreciate, and therefore, I think, are searching much more for

anti-establishment than any necessarily ideological purity. There are going to be a number of people who voted for Donald Trump and also for Zohamandami as an example in New York City. who went Sanders, Trump, Mom, Dami. That's not about ideology. It's about, are you fighting the system or you're part of the system? And it's also about charismatic leadership that all three men are apparently fearless and apparently say what they believe, as opposed to parroting a sort of thought-out policy put together by committee.

There's one person that we know does concern Donald Trump and certainly undermines him, and that's Jeffrey Epstein, the specter of Jeffrey Epstein from beyond the grave at one point his best friend before they had a falling out. Does his name ever come up when you're talking to young people? It did. It came up over this weekend. We did a focus group of this past weekend, and it was from that Trump mom, Dami. person. And again, it's, you know, basically two promises that this young man are remembered, right? One is, are you going to kind of give me a fighting chance, right, to live my best life? And, you know, are you going to release the Epstein file? So literally that is what he said, those two things. So that was one of the very first times, honestly, of the, you know, probably 50 focus groups I've done, that his name came up organically, but it did come up, and it came up within this, like, anti-establishment. Maybe he's not what exactly he promised to be.

Listen, I think that, you know, Trump and the Republicans, obviously, and Kirk, all kind of connected to helping elect him to the White House. and as much work, I think Democrats have to do. But, you know, Republicans are going to shake a ground with young people, with the younger men. And what we all need to appreciate is the voters in 2008, many of the voters in 2006 weren't part of the 24 election. Okay. Those voters came of age during the Biden term, okay? You know, the post-COVID effect, isolation, loneliness, inflation, a feeling of America was weaker or not stronger. And government overreach insisting that kids wore masks to schools, insisting on everybody staying at home when clearly it was having a terrible impact on mental health and the economy.

100%. Okay. So that was what younger men and many younger women brought. into the elector, and that's a lot of how they made their decisions based upon that reaction. Well, today's high school students, young college students, young people in the workforce, they're making their kind of political identity is being developed, is being developed through the first year of the Trump 2.0 term. Okay. Mostly all of it is negative as I shared about those numbers. Okay. So that is going to be the vibe that they're taken in 26 and in 28 in terms of he's not delivering what he said. There's more chaos. There's less safety. There's more economic concern, right? What is he doing about that? So he can't count on that. There was a significant backlash in the 2018 midterms that could be a significant backlash again in 26, but only if Democrats take the page out of what Kirk did, organizing, and what Mamdami and others are doing, listening, and really begin to make meaningful

connections beyond just those algorithmic, you know, data feeds that they seem to be using at the expense of actually truly listening. That's so interesting. I was going to ask you about algorithms and social media, and to what extent does it ever come up that the Chinese own TikTok, which is one of the most powerful drivers of political discussion in the United States. Is this something that any of the people you've talked to show concern about? Do they show an understanding that everything you see on social media isn't necessarily true? They're deeply concerned about that.

I don't know. I mean, we've asked some questions. The role of Chinese ownership, honestly. hasn't kind of come up recently. But what does come up is almost, almost by default, is younger people, specifically younger men saying, like, we don't want to see this, right? We're fed this, you know, often kind of far right, misogynistic, violence, content that we don't want to be a part of, but they get it anyway, right?

That's what we're hearing. again, they're blaming kind of the establishment, right? Younger men, younger people want far more government oversight here, right? But they, again, kind of believe that it's those corporate patches, right, that Democrats, Republicans are wearing, okay, representing, you know, by big tech and Silicon Valley. And they know that is harming them through their mental health and ultimately through their physical health. That's why we talked just a couple of minutes ago that they're trying to find anything they can do to unplug, whether it's showing up in a couple of hours of focus groups where we can't use your phone or showing up to worship or service or something like that, right? So I think younger people are more aware than anyone else of the content that they're seeing and they're essentially asking institutions that help them, help themselves.

But again, just another indication of government failing to deliver something that they're asking for. So they think both political parties are corrupt and they're looking for leaders who appear to be free of the ribbons of corruption that tie them to the big parties, which Bernie certainly does seem to be and AOC and indeed Mamdani. John, we're just going to take an ad break. And we're back with John Delavolpe talking about how young men feel about modern America. That's right. I think the biggest divide in this country today, Joanna, is the divide between people who feel heard versus people who feel unheard. And the most successful politicians are going to be the ones from either party who let people feel heard. That's a lesson I've taken from the last years of my research.

Well, as the mother of two sons, I find it astonishing the idea that young men don't think they're heard because their voices are very loud most of the time. Do you have a prediction for what are the polls telling you about what's going to happen in New York and Virginia and New Jersey? Yeah, well, all the polls are saying that, you know, Mamdami has a strong double-digit lead. He's leading across every major demographic group that we can see. And in Virginia, you know, it was expected for quite a while, right? That's a state that tends to flip that Spanberger would win as a question of by how much, right? And most of the polling now is showing, you know, a double-digit lead and win as possible with, I think, a more narrow potential victory in New Jersey. But that trifecta next week could really begin to change a dynamic.

and I think of younger people and also other kind of Democrats and progress of some hope moving into to 26. Okay. Well, it's good to know that young men care about the demolition of the East Wing too, traditionally the home of the First Lady. I'd love to have you back to talk further about Turning Point USA and how you replace someone like Charlie Kirk. I understand Eric has gone in there. But one of the points of charismatic leadership is that sense that they're incredibly hard to follow and that often what they do is tear down the institutions that people are used to, but you can't replace them once they've gone. You just inherit the chaos. So I'm very curious to

see what happens at turning point and whether or not it continues its impact on young men. John, thank you so much for coming on and telling us yet again that young men must be heard and are feeling unheard. What are you up to next? Well, we are watching, obviously, the early voting in as many states as we can. And I have my 51st Harvard poll in the field now. I'm so excited about that. And we're reporting that right after Thanksgiving time. So look for that soon.

Okay. And let me ask you one final question then. Do polls still have a role in the world of Polly Market? I think they are driving Polly Market, actually. And I think that, unfortunately, this is maybe for the next pod. I think, Joanna, I think they have too much of a role in terms of shaping the conversation. We should be looking at the top line numbers, but it's the conversations like the ones that we've had, right? The quality of research that gives voice and humanity to the polling in the polymarket. That, I think, is what we need to be spending more time on, not whatever the chances are of some person winning or losing. That is where I think polling oftentimes is misused. Okay, so you're off to do more polling, talk to more people, hear more young men, I'm sure they will be thrilled. We will look forward to seeing you after Thanksgiving.

See you soon. Thanks. So there you have it from John Della Volpe, real insights into how alienated young male voters in particular feel from the institutions of America that are supposed to make them feel tucked in and protected and that they have a big future in America. Always fascinating. And as the mother of two sons, as I said to John, I find it extraordinary that young men don't find themselves heard because they are so noisy. And yet clearly they do feel alienated. And it's something both parties need to take heed of. We'll be back with John after Thanksgiving with his latest insights. If you have been, thank you for joining us.

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