Latest news with #IlyseHogue
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Democrats set out to study young men. Here are their findings.
The Democrats trying to understand young American men know people are roasting their plan. All that mocking just proves their point, they said: Democrats aren't taking this disaffected and politically alienated voting bloc seriously enough. It 'reaffirms what young men already think, that Democrats don't want to invest in you,' said Ilyse Hogue, who co-founded the Speaking with American Men project. The group has a two-year, $20 million budget to study young men and how Democrats can reach them. The results of an initial round of research shared exclusively with POLITICO — including 30 focus groups and a national media consumption survey — found many young men believe that 'neither party has our back,' as one Black man from Georgia said in a focus group. Participants described the Democratic Party as overly-scripted and cautious, while Republicans are seen as confident and unafraid to offend. 'Democrats are seen as weak, whereas Republicans are seen as strong,' Hogue said. 'Young men also spoke of being invisible to the Democratic coalition, and so you've got this weak problem and then you've got this, 'I don't think they care about me' problem, and I think the combination is kind of a killer.' The SAM project — which turned into a punchline for liberals and conservatives alike — is pitching itself to donors and officials as a hub for research, paid advertising and influencer outreach that's focused on young men, a once-critical part of the Democratic coalition that they lost to President Donald Trump in 2024. The group was founded by Hogue, the former president of NARAL; John Della Volpe, a pollster who specializes in Gen Z voters; and former Texas Rep. Colin Allred, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate last year. The focus groups found that young men feel they are in crisis: stressed, ashamed and confused over what it means to be a man in 2025. They vented about conflicting cultural messages of masculinity that put them in a 'no-win situation around the meaning of 'a man,'' according to the SAM project memo. They described how the Covid pandemic left them isolated and socially disconnected. They also said they now feel overwhelmed by economic anxiety, making 'traditional milestones,' like buying a home or saving for kids' college, 'feel impossible,' an analysis of the research said. 'The degree to which those economic concerns are also impacting how they think about themselves and quote-unquote success of being a man, and living up to their own expectations or the expectations of their family or society,' Della Volpe said. 'There's another layer of economic anxiety that I don't think I fully saw until now.' Young men's feelings of crisis are connected to their exodus from the party, SAM's research suggests. SAM's national survey found that just 27 percent of young men viewed the Democratic Party positively, while 43 percent of them viewed the Republican Party favorably. The polling sample included 23 percent self-described Democrats, 28 percent Republicans and 36 percent independents. In last year's presidential election, the gender gap leapt to 13 percentage points nationally, up from 9 percentage points in 2020, the Democratic firm Catalist found in its final 2024 analysis that. Men's support for Kamala Harris dropped by 6 points, winning just 42 percent of men — the lowest on record in recent elections. That gap became even more pronounced among 18- and 29-year-olds. Just 46 percent of young men voted for Harris in 2024. The losses tracked across every racial group, and the most pronounced hemorrhaging came among Latinos and Black men. Those challenges for Democrats echoed through the focus groups. An Asian American professional described Democrats as embracing "the fluid masculinity of being, like, empathetic and sensitive," while 'Republicans are more like, the traditional masculinity of a provider, strong, and the machismo type." Another Latino man from Las Vegas said that during the 2024 campaign, Harris focused on, 'Oh, I got Beyonce on stage with me. Oh, I got Lady Gaga on stage,' and 'it just kind of felt like, what does that have to do with me? I'm trying to move up in life.' 'Trump's over here like, 'if we're able to get a surplus in our budget, then we're going to have no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. It's going to take a while to get to that point, but at least he's saying the things that — oh, this is what I'm going to do,' the Latino man added. A second Latino man from Las Vegas spoke admiringly of Trump and Andrew Tate, a controversial influencer who has been accused of rape and sex trafficking, as 'always loved and hated, but they're truthful, honest, to what they believe in.' Della Volpe, who warned Democrats ahead of the 2024 election about their weakness with young men, said, 'this is not a lost cohort, a lost generation,' but Democrats are 'losing it' right now.' Hogue said part of SAM's mission 'super charg[ing] social listening' and progressive influencers on Discord, Twitch and other platforms in their fundraising proposal. They're urging Democratic candidates to use non-traditional digital advertising, especially on YouTube, in-game digital ads and sports and gaming podcasts. 'Democrats can't win these folks over if they're not speaking the language that young men are speaking,' Hogue said. 'Most people I talked to, Democratic operatives, have never heard of Red Pill Fitness, which is just huge online.' But there's still frustration around SAM's pitch that isn't just about mocking it. 'The Democratic Party is missing that we're not going to be able to message our way out of these deep problems men are facing, starting with the fact that they know the Democratic Party doesn't really like or respect them,' said Ross Morales Rocketto, a Democratic strategist who's also focused on researching men but isn't involved in the project. 'It's really easy for Republicans to play off the politics of grievance.'
Politico
8 hours ago
- Business
- Politico
Democrats set out to study young men. Here are their findings.
The Democrats trying to understand young American men know people are roasting their plan. All that mocking just proves their point, they said: Democrats aren't taking this disaffected and politically alienated voting bloc seriously enough. It 'reaffirms what young men already think, that Democrats don't want to invest in you,' said Ilyse Hogue, who co-founded the Speaking with American Men project. The group has a two-year, $20 million budget to study young men and how Democrats can reach them. The results of an initial round of research shared exclusively with POLITICO — including 30 focus groups and a national media consumption survey — found many young men believe that 'neither party has our back,' as one Black man from Georgia said in a focus group. Participants described the Democratic Party as overly-scripted and cautious, while Republicans are seen as confident and unafraid to offend. 'Democrats are seen as weak, whereas Republicans are seen as strong,' Hogue said. 'Young men also spoke of being invisible to the Democratic coalition, and so you've got this weak problem and then you've got this, 'I don't think they care about me' problem, and I think the combination is kind of a killer.' The SAM project — which turned into a punchline for liberals and conservatives alike — is pitching itself to donors and officials as a hub for research, paid advertising and influencer outreach that's focused on young men, a once-critical part of the Democratic coalition that they lost to President Donald Trump in 2024. The group was founded by Hogue, the former president of NARAL; John Della Volpe, a pollster who specializes in Gen Z voters; and former Texas Rep. Colin Allred, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate last year. The focus groups found that young men feel they are in crisis: stressed, ashamed and confused over what it means to be a man in 2025. They vented about conflicting cultural messages of masculinity that put them in a 'no-win situation around the meaning of 'a man,'' according to the SAM project memo. They described how the Covid pandemic left them isolated and socially disconnected. They also said they now feel overwhelmed by economic anxiety, making 'traditional milestones,' like buying a home or saving for kids' college, 'feel impossible,' an analysis of the research said. 'The degree to which those economic concerns are also impacting how they think about themselves and quote-unquote success of being a man, and living up to their own expectations or the expectations of their family or society,' Della Volpe said. 'There's another layer of economic anxiety that I don't think I fully saw until now.' Young men's feelings of crisis are connected to their exodus from the party, SAM's research suggests. SAM's national survey found that just 27 percent of young men viewed the Democratic Party positively, while 43 percent of them viewed the Republican Party favorably. The polling sample included 23 percent self-described Democrats, 28 percent Republicans and 36 percent independents. In last year's presidential election, the gender gap leapt to 13 percentage points nationally, up from 9 percentage points in 2020, the Democratic firm Catalist found in its final 2024 analysis that. Men's support for Kamala Harris dropped by 6 points, winning just 42 percent of men — the lowest on record in recent elections. That gap became even more pronounced among 18- and 29-year-olds. Just 46 percent of young men voted for Harris in 2024. The losses tracked across every racial group, and the most pronounced hemorrhaging came among Latinos and Black men. Those challenges for Democrats echoed through the focus groups. An Asian American professional described Democrats as embracing 'the fluid masculinity of being, like, empathetic and sensitive,' while 'Republicans are more like, the traditional masculinity of a provider, strong, and the machismo type.' Another Latino man from Las Vegas said that during the 2024 campaign, Harris focused on, 'Oh, I got Beyonce on stage with me. Oh, I got Lady Gaga on stage,' and 'it just kind of felt like, what does that have to do with me? I'm trying to move up in life.' 'Trump's over here like, 'if we're able to get a surplus in our budget, then we're going to have no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. It's going to take a while to get to that point, but at least he's saying the things that — oh, this is what I'm going to do,' the Latino man added. A second Latino man from Las Vegas spoke admiringly of Trump and Andrew Tate, a controversial influencer who has been accused of rape and sex trafficking, as 'always loved and hated, but they're truthful, honest, to what they believe in.' Della Volpe, who warned Democrats ahead of the 2024 election about their weakness with young men, said, 'this is not a lost cohort, a lost generation,' but Democrats are 'losing it' right now.' Hogue said part of SAM's mission 'super charg[ing] social listening' and progressive influencers on Discord, Twitch and other platforms in their fundraising proposal. They're urging Democratic candidates to use non-traditional digital advertising, especially on YouTube, in-game digital ads and sports and gaming podcasts. 'Democrats can't win these folks over if they're not speaking the language that young men are speaking,' Hogue said. 'Most people I talked to, Democratic operatives, have never heard of Red Pill Fitness, which is just huge online.' But there's still frustration around SAM's pitch that isn't just about mocking it. 'The Democratic Party is missing that we're not going to be able to message our way out of these deep problems men are facing, starting with the fact that they know the Democratic Party doesn't really like or respect them,' said Ross Morales Rocketto, a Democratic strategist who's also focused on researching men but isn't involved in the project. 'It's really easy for Republicans to play off the politics of grievance.'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
How Democrats can make "Speaking with American Men" a success
After losing big with men under 30 in the 2024 election, Democrats have spent $20 million on a program called 'Speaking with American Men' (SAM) to help figure out which 'spaces' they need to show up in to fare better with this demographic. A smart place to start would be the gym; the booming men's fitness market is expected to more than double by 2029, growth driven by men under 25, who are joining gyms almost twice as fast as women. And as SAM co-director Ilyse Hogue and I wrote here last year, the right has done an excellent job parlaying young men's healthy interest in exercise into an embrace of reactionary politics. But it doesn't need to be that way. Across the political spectrum, craving the surefire sense of accomplishment the gym provides is an age-old response to an unstable political and economic environment. And historically, championing physical fitness with appeals to American manliness has not been a partisan issue. If the SAM initiative is going to net the Democrats more than online snark, its leaders should appreciate that this history suggests the party's path forward might just begin at the gym. In the vast digital universe targeting young men, the idea that exercise is imperative to self-actualization is inescapable. It's most obvious in fitness-focused influencers like Ashton Hall, whose six-hour 'morning routine' recently racked up nearly a billion views on X. But plenty of public figures with grander concerns insist exercise is integral to achievement. Take Andrew Tate's obsession with 'plummeting masculinity' or Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s quest to make America healthy again. A commitment to early-morning workouts, Tate advises, is Step 1 to asserting alpha dominance. Performing pullups, as the septuagenarian Kennedy does shirtless at Gold's Gym, is proof of political power. Such encouragement spans the political spectrum. While it's become more common to see Republicans like Paul Ryan or Pete Hegseth flaunting their fitness, Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden often promoted exercise as a personal and policy priority, and former Rep. Jamaal Bowman went viral in 2023 for benching 405 pounds while wearing a Working Families Party T-shirt. Online, progressive streamer Hasan Piker expounds on his diet and fitness regimen as readily as he opines on capitalism and climate change. He recently met up with fellow streamer and 'big Trump guy' Bradley Martyn at a rare site of common ground: the weight room. When Piker, with mock seriousness, announced to his followers that he and Martyn hoped to inspire 'the young men out there who are lost — who feel anchorless, rudderless — by lifting some heavy weights,' he articulated an idea that long predates the so-called right-wing 'manosphere.' For more than a century, in moments of upheaval that raise questions about what it means to be a man, men have reliably sought a sense of agency in exercise. When the world feels confusing or out of control, make a man of yourself, beginning with your body is an especially enticing proposition. If, despite one's best efforts, landing a rewarding career or a loving mate proves elusive, then why not capture a sense of self-efficacy at the squat rack? Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg's billions may be out of reach, but attaining their newly sculpted bodies only takes some discipline and protein shakes. The social and economic roots of the American man's fixation on fitness date to the early 20th century. As urbanization and compulsory education laws kept middle-class, mostly white boys in schools staffed by women, psychologist G. Stanley Hall worried in 1904 that they were being weakened by the 'social instincts of girls' and prescribed rough sports such as wrestling and boxing to counter what he called the dangerous 'repressions of modern life.' Although the white-collar careers to which upwardly mobile young men aspired conferred superiority over the sweaty masses, this prestige came at a cost: so-called 'desk diseases,' as 19th-century doctors styled them, marked by sloped shoulders and sagging paunches. And President Teddy Roosevelt touted 'the strenuous life' as a way for young men to resolve the paradox of progress. During the Depression, as men of all classes reckoned with the emasculation of joblessness, bodybuilder and entrepreneur Charles Atlas successfully peddled an inexpensive mail-order muscle-building regimen that promised to unlock 'he-man living' and 'make you a new man.' To combat concerns at the time that caring for one's body and appearance was somehow effeminate, Atlas promised men that a muscular physique would inspire adoration in women and command the respect and fear of other men. The unprecedented prosperity of the 1950s, with its many desk jobs, televisions and time-saving appliances, ushered in yet more anxiety about the softening of the American male — among members of both major political parties. Worried that the sudden glut of leisure risked rendering boys unfit for military duty, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration launched what would become the Presidential Council on Youth Fitness in 1957. 'We are not a nation of softies,' Vice President Richard Nixon warned at its launch, 'but we could become one.' In the December 1960 issue of Sports Illustrated, President-elect John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, amplified this concern that 'soft Americans' who languished on the sofa, or as spectators in the stands, represented a national security and a moral hazard. A vigorous American man, he insisted, must be on the move — a lesson he reinforced in countless photos of him swimming, sailing, tossing a football or challenging the military (and his brother Robert) to hike 50 miles in 20 hours. The tumult of the 1970s, with its 'stagflation,' second-wave feminism and general loss of faith in government and the military coincided with another wave of male fitness boosterism. 'If neither our doctors nor the government can be expected to bring us good health, to whom can we look?' wrote running proselytizer Jim Fixx in his 1977 bestseller 'The Complete Book of Running.' 'The answer is plain: to ourselves.' Given the many physical and mental benefits of exercise, the latest push for men to self-actualize through fitness is hardly a negative — or necessarily partisan — development. Experts agree that exercise is close to a 'magic pill' for its many health benefits. Gyms have also never been more inclusive: Weight rooms welcome women and men frequent studio classes. It's progress, surely, that no one needs the reassurance Arnold Schwarzenegger offered in 1977, that 'men shouldn't feel like f--s just because they want to have nice-looking bodies.' Yet destabilizing moments like the one we are now living through reveal an enduring dynamic: Men are encouraged with particular urgency to get moving when their social status feels in flux. Generation after generation, boosters sell men the irresistible idea that at the gym, if nowhere else, the sweat of your brow is all that stands between you and success. It's an understandable, even healthy impulse, and Democrats would do well to start rebuilding their political muscle quite literally, by seeking to identify with the guy at the gym. This article was originally published on
