All but the olds soured on Trump in 2025
Much has been made about Donald Trump’s gains in 2024, especially among young men and Hispanic voters. That is mostly true. Today’s focus is how his appeal had waxed and waned among young and old, men and women.
I use net favorability to Trump because it applies when he was out of office as well as since he returned for his second term. Net favorability is generally pretty close to net approval. In my April Marquette Law School Poll national survey, Trump’s net favorability was -22 percentage points and his net approval was -21 points.
Trump’s net favorability was negative with all combinations of sex and age in 2021 and 2022 polls. There were at most slight gains during this period. But in 2023 his net ratings rose with all groups except for older women. In 2024 men of all ages further increased their net ratings, becoming net positive with men 45-59 and 60+, and momentarily with men 30-44. The youngest men became more favorable but peaked short of becoming net positive.
Among women, the increased favorability of 2023 continued into at least part of 2024, with older women’s favorable ratings increasing for the first time in 2024. Unlike the men, no age group of women reached net positive territory despite the general improved views of Trump.
In 2025 and 2026, however, all groups except for men and women 60 or older, who have remained stable, turned sour on Trump. The timing of the turn down varies a bit, with young women declining sooner than others, but for both sexes and all age groups under 60, 2025-26 has seen a steady downward trend in net favorability.
As of April, all gender and age groups are net negative to Trump except for men age 60 and older. Women of each age group are more negative than men of the same age, a pattern seen throughout the last five years.
For all the chatter about young men under 30 moving to Trump in 2024, the decline in net favorability has been steepest with this group in 2025. The emphasis on changing views of young men was correct in saying that they had rising support for Trump in 2024 and he gained votes in this group. But that is also a bit misleading in suggesting that young men became strong supporters of Trump. In fact they never reached net positive favorability. In Pew’s validated voter surveys Trump lost men under 30 by 5 points in 2024, an improvement over losing this group by 14 points in 2020. Among women under 30, Trump lost by 29 points in 2024 and by 35 points in 2020. Net gains of 9 points with young men and 6 points among young women are notable, but fall short of a major realignment of preferences. Exit polls in 2024 show young men voting for Trump by 1 point, 49% to 48%, and young women voting against Trump, 38%-61%. I think Pew’s data are more reliable for this analysis, but at the most Trump barely won young men, doing significantly less well than with older men in the exit poll. Pew data are here and the exit data are at the very bottom here.
The takeaway is that young men were not the key to Trump’s victory in 2024, though he improved with them over 2020. However, the fortunes of the GOP in 2026 have far more to do with Trump’s falling favor among all age groups under 60 than with any single sex or age group. Declining favorability is widespread across the population, and isolated strength is not enough to power a midterm victory. How many seats change in the House and Senate rests on the limited number of closely contested seats, before and after recent redistricting, but also depends on how unpopular the sitting president is. At this point, he is considerably less popular than at the start of his second term, including among young men.