Trump embraces ‘American Badass’ image to get young men to vote
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Among those aged 18 to 34, 46 per cent had a favourable impression of Donald Trump.
PHOTO: REUTERS
WASHINGTON – A young dude with a beard is slouched on the couch, a slice of pizza in one hand, TV remote in the other.
“If you sit this election out,” says the male voice-over in an ad that ran on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X, “Kamala and the crazies will win.”
The 15-second spot by tycoon Elon Musk’s political action committee goes on to say that Donald Trump is an “American Badass”, backed with the iconic image of his bloodied face and raised fist after an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally.
The ad is part of a push by Trump’s campaign and its allies to convince young men to get off the couch and vote for the former president. With less than 40 days before election day, the number of truly undecided voters in the electorate is small and shrinking. Winning depends on getting supporters to the polls in the seven swing states that will determine the path to 270 electoral votes.
Men tend to support Trump, but younger people gravitate towards Democratic nominee Kamala Harris: 49 per cent of men had a favourable view of Trump versus 45 per cent of women, according to the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of swing state voters. Among those aged 18 to 34, 46 per cent had a favourable impression of Trump and 57 per cent felt that way about Ms Harris.
However, men are also less likely to show up at the polls.
Women have registered to vote – and turned up to cast a ballot – at higher rates than men in every presidential election since 1980, according to census data and the Centre for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. And the gender divide could not be starker this election cycle.
Ms Harris is riding a wave of enthusiasm from female voters, from the black women who quickly mobilised support the day President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, to singer Taylor Swift’s endorsement after the debate. Proud “childless cat ladies” have organised dance parties and phone campaigns, while celebrity Oprah Winfrey headlined an event with Ms Harris near Detroit.
Trump has tried to appeal to women. In an all-caps post on Truth Social, he wrote that he will “protect women at a level never seen before”, making their lives “great again”.
But the poll shows women are more likely to have a very unfavourable impression of Trump. So, his campaign has turned its mobilisation efforts towards young men and the things they tend to like: The former president pledged at a Bitcoin conference to make the US “the crypto capital of the planet”. He vowed to “save vaping”.
He has gone to UFC fights and had professional wrestler Hulk Hogan speak at the Republican National Convention. He is slated to attend an Alabama-Georgia college football game this weekend. And he regularly mentions Mr Musk as “a friend of mine” and “a great guy” during campaign events.
Mr Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla and SpaceX, has far greater appeal among young men – the poll shows that 49 per cent of men in battleground states have a favourable view of the billionaire compared with just 32 per cent of women. He makes electric cars and rockets and, like Trump, comes across as authentic and unscripted. Mr Musk has used X, the platform he bought for US$44 billion (S$56.4 billion), to promote Trump’s candidacy and excoriate Ms Harris.
“The thing about Elon Musk is that he is essentially a brilliant teenager,” said Mr Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. “He is very public about the fact that the Biden administration hurt his feelings, and there is an immature grievance thing. He is basically swivelling around 360 degrees with his middle finger up saying, ‘Screw you!’ There is something very appealing about that to young men.”
Convincing those young men to vote is another story, however. To help gin up support, Mr Musk started America PAC
On Facebook, several of America PAC’s ads are being micro-targeted at users who have expressed interest or engaged with subjects that typically appeal to young men: boating, fishing, hunting, Chick-fil-A, former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow, podcaster Joe Rogan, UFC CEO Dana White and personal finance personality Dave Ramsey, according to Meta Platforms’ ad library.
The super PAC is also targeting some YouTube ads at 18- to 34-year-old men in swing states like Arizona and North Carolina, Google’s Ad Transparency Centre shows.
Like Mr Musk himself, America PAC has also turned to memes to get out its message.
A senior Republican operative said the Trump campaign’s reliance on outside groups like Mr Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, which promotes conservative politics on college campuses, will help bolster support among young men.
But the operative said it could be counterproductive to spend money directly targeting them as a voting bloc because younger people tend to vote at lower rates. That makes turning them out to the polls in large numbers both labour-intensive and expensive for campaigns.
A spokesman for Turning Point, Mr Andrew Kolvet, disputed that. The group’s non-profit organisation is registering young voters in large numbers on college campuses, he said in an interview, while its political arm, Turning Point Action, is canvassing and organising across battleground states like Arizona and Michigan to bring out Republican voters of all ages who did not cast ballots in 2020.
“Our goal with younger voters is to lose by less,” he said. “If we are moving the needle incrementally with younger voters, while on the other side we are bringing out those low-propensity voters who didn’t come out last time, we believe that is a winning combination.”
In general, younger voters, black voters and city dwellers tend to support Democrats, while older, white and rural voters typically back Republicans, according to Pew Research. This election, contentious issues like abortion are also motivating women to turn out in higher numbers, making the Trump campaign’s push for young men even more essential.
“Young women are fired up about abortion and economic issues,” said Mr David Mermin, a partner at Lake Research, a leading Democratic polling firm. “I am quite certain that when it all shakes out, you will see more women than men in the electorate this fall.”
After the Supreme Court reversed Roe v Wade in 2022, there was a surge of voter registration among women. Access to abortion is also on the ballot in several states, including Arizona, Florida and Nevada, in November. The Supreme Court itself referenced growing female political power when it overturned Roe.
“Women are not without electoral or political power,” said the ruling, known as the Dobbs decision. “It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so.” BLOOMBERG
