The Bro Wave That Swamped the Democrats
Listening to and watching Donald Trump for the past month, one would think he was running for the presidency of a fraternity. The rampant swearing, the crude jokes, the denigration of women in power—he might as well have been running for Top Dude instead of Leader of the Free World. But it worked. The bros turned out in force, eagerly electing a man who just days ago simulated oral sex with a microphone at a campaign rally.
Women were supposed to save the country, turning out in Dobbs-driven droves to keep that sexist and rapist out of the White House and elect the first female president. Of course, women in America are expected to shoulder a lot of burdens for society at large—often to clean up for men, both figuratively and literally. So it’s sadly not surprising, after Kamala Harris’s loss, that some pundits are looking at exit polls and concluding that women voters did not Do Their Job.
White women, in particular, seem to be taking the brunt of the criticism, but Harris lost that group by a smaller margin than Joe Biden did in 2020. Overall, 54 percent of women indeed voted for her, versus 44 percent for Trump, according to exit polls. What’s more, women made up a bigger chunk of the voting electorate this year, comprising 53 percent of voters versus 52 percent in 2020. So why wasn’t that enough?
Men. Or more accurately, bros.
Men predictably voted for Trump, 54–44—an improvement for him over 2020. In the key state of Pennsylvania, his advantage among men was even wider: 57 percent, compared to 41 percent for Harris. But it wasn’t (just) the stereotypical old white dudes, unhappy with the new world gender order. It was the disaffected, searching, and somewhat resentful young bro. Michigan is a case in point. Among women voters aged 18–29, Harris had a 16-point lead, but among young men, she had a stunning 20-point deficit. Trump scored an even more shocking and groundbreaking feat with Latino men, winning that group 54 to 44 percent.
Trump, it should be noted, has a long string of losses on his record—not just his 2020 reelection campaign but the 2018 midterms and this year’s down-ticket candidates. But his biggest successes came when his opponent was a woman: Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Harris this year. With the added pressure from the Dobbs decision, women, many of us assumed, were eager to be finally listened to, especially at the ballot box.
Trump, who is not conventionally smart but clearly canny, made up for all those unhappy women by going full-throttle for the bros. There was nothing subtle about it. At a Sunday rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, after Trump repeated his claim that Harris had never worked at McDonalds as a youth, an attendee shouted out that she had worked “on the corner,” intimating that she was a prostitute—to which Trump guffawed, adding, “This place is amazing.” And on Tuesday, he called Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi an “evil, sick, crazy bi—” before theatrically shushing himself.
“Trump’s appeal to bro culture was huge. I mean, look at Elon Musk, bro extraordinaire, as Trump’s biggest cheerleader,” said P.J. Henry, a social psychologist and professor at New York University in Abu Dhabi. “And ethnic minority men are just as defensive of masculinity (and threatened by femininity) as anyone else, maybe even more so. So yeah, Trump just needed to lob diminishing insults at Harris and golf and eat steak, and he was fine with these groups.”
In doing so, Trump gave these men license to be openly misogynistic. Ahead of the election, social media was filled with insults from young (or young-looking) men calling Harris a “ho” (or wearing shirts calling her a “tramp”). The message was spreading: Real men don’t vote for women. As Fox News host Jesse Watters said, his wife voting for Harris would be tantamount to having an affair. (No comment.)
And then the Bro in Chief, Joe Rogan, delivered the coup de grâce on Monday by endorsing Trump. This was not surprising, given that Trump had done a three-hour interview on Rogan’s massively popular bro-cast while Harris had not. She wanted Rogan to come to her, instead of having to travel to Texas, and was only able to offer him an hour of her time. That seems a reasonable offer from the sitting vice president of the United States (and one a major news network would have jumped at), but that wasn’t an acceptable excuse to at least one Rogan fan, who reportedly told MSNBC that he voted for Trump for that reason.
Women now outnumber men on college campuses, and are more likely to get bachelor’s and advanced degrees, which in turn increases their likelihood of voting for Democrats—not to mention living around, and socializing with, other Democrats. Meanwhile, young men may have moved toward Trump because they look at women’s advancements and wonder when they’ll get theirs, just as men of earlier generations did.
“While white men still dominate the world, what you’ve got is a number of women in our society who are frustrated because they’re not getting what they see as their due,” said Kathleen Dolan, a University of Wisconsin Milwaukee professor who studies gender and politics.
The bros got their big win on Tuesday. And women, it is clear, are going to have to wait even longer to be heard.