Trump Loses Young Men

[applegrove]

Trump Loses Young Men

February 12, 2026 at 6:38 am EST By Taegan Goddard 65 Comments

https://politicalwire.com/2026/02/12/trump-loses-young-men/

A new Third Way poll of male voters between the ages of 18 to 29 finds a whopping 58% believe Donald Trump has negatively impacted their finances, vs. just 23% who say he’s had a positive impact.

The young men gave Trump a dismal 32% approval rating, compared to 66% who disapprove. That 34-point gap is a far cry from Trump’s 2024 numbers: he won 18- to 29-year-old male voters by 14 points on his way back to the White House.

[Shellback Squid]

1. he's more worried about losing young and very young women

[flvegan]

2. "Good. Less competition for the young girls, which I prefer." - Trump, probably

[Vogon_Glory]

3. I guess there just aren't enough Generation Z centi-millionaire and

billionaire bros to kick Donald John’s approval ratings over 70 percent in that age cohort. Who’d have thunk it?

(Probably nobody from NewsCorp, One America New and News Max)

[mwmisses4289]

4. They are in the FO part of FAFO.

Of this age cohort who did vote, didn't something like 60-70% of them vote for trump?

[pat_k]

5. I think 32% approval is closer to the actual overall number.

I have a theory that the overall approval ratings reported by gallop and other "trusted" organizations are inflated -- perhaps by a lot.

The reason is that they probably all rely on Gallup's 2025 annual average of partisan affiliation to correct sample sizes to reflect their published annual estimate of party affiliation.

The problem with this is that the annual average of Gallup interviews over the course of 2025 fails to capture the reality, which is that the exodus from the Republican party has, and continues to, accelerate.

I suspect they are well aware of this because they conduct party affiliation surveys throughout each year and only publish the annual average at year's end.

In other words, that stubborn 90% approval rating among self-identified Republicans represents a percentage of a shrinking number of people -- a number that is erroneously being inflated because they do not apply partisan affiliation survey results based on the same slice of time as the approval surveys.

I could of course be wrong about their model, but at a minimum, I think someone more well-versed in the models used should look deeper into this.

If i'm right, then the reason the are ceasing president approval reporting is that they KNOW their model needs fixing to capture reality, and rather than fix it and face lawsuits and blowback from the felon for publishing even MORE abysmal numbers, they are opting out.

[Wounded Bear]

6. So this is why Gallup is stopping Pres approval polling...

[applegrove]

7. Yeah. What is that about?