Ahead of midterms, Republicans confront cooling support from young men over Trump policies

By Nathan Layne and Aleksandra Michalska

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire, March 9 (Reuters) - In a college library lined with volumes on America's greatest presidents, six young men who voted for Donald Trump gathered to size up his second term. Their verdicts ranged from guarded approval to disappointment, reflecting growing tension in a demographic that helped propel Trump to victory in 2024.

While the students form a very small sample size, their mixed reviews - including criticism of what several called overly harsh immigration enforcement and frustration over rising prices - mirror a broader shift in national polling that shows the Republican president is losing ground with young men.

Public opinion polling suggests that this softening of support, part of a broader unhappiness among Americans over Trump's policies, threatens Republicans' hopes of retaining their slim majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Analysts who track the youth vote told Reuters many young men report feeling little tangible improvement in their economic prospects since Trump returned to office in January 2025.

Sitting with five classmates in the political library at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, 20-year-old sophomore Tyler Witzgall captured a sentiment common among his peers: The president, for all his accomplishments, has fallen short on issues shaping their daily lives, like high prices.

"I'm still going to graduate and be in an enormous amount of debt. I won’t be able to buy a home for a while," Witzgall said, grading Trump a C or C-plus, describing his disappointment in the president's efforts to tackle domestic economic issues.

None of the students said they regretted their vote, viewing the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, then Vice President Kamala Harris, as a continuation of a presidency they associated with unchecked immigration and spiraling costs.

Yet even solid Trump backers like Ian Pomfret, a 20-year-old sophomore, joined others in the student panel criticizing what he describes as overly aggressive tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents implementing Trump's crackdown.

"The ICE thing is a huge problem," Pomfret said, pointing to the two U.S. citizens killed by federal agents in Minneapolis. "I feel like there is a better way of going about it than raiding and killing and instant deportation."

Pomfret still broadly supports Trump, grading him a B-plus.

Last month, some 33% of men aged 18-29 approved of Trump's performance in the White House, down from 43% in February 2025, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. Trump garnered the support of 46% of young males ​in the 2024 presidential election, up 7 points from 2020, according to exit polling analyzed by Pew Research.

A party strategist who works on House races pointed to a CBS News survey in February showing that 43% of young voters view Republican positions as "mainstream", and said the party could still secure midterm wins if it captures at least 40% of the youth vote.

Turnout among young voters is historically low in midterm elections, with only a quarter casting a ballot in 2022, half the overall rate.

Still, young voters can tip close races, as in 2018 when a wave of mass shootings spurred youth turnout and helped flip more than a dozen congressional seats to the Democrats, according to John Della Volpe, a pollster who specializes in the Gen Z vote.

"All evidence in the last 15 or 16 months is that this cohort cannot be counted on at this stage to be reliable Republican voters," Della Volpe said. "Mostly because they haven't felt tangible improvements in their day-to-day lives."

RNC FOLLOWS TRUMP TO TIKTOK

Trump’s pledges in his 2024 campaign to curb inflation, boost economic growth, and toughen immigration enforcement helped attract young males to his MAGA movement. A string of attention-grabbing moves, like attending a sneaker event, sitting down with popular podcasters like Joe Rogan and Theo Von and posting content on TikTok, also enhanced his standing with younger men, political analysts said.

Last month, the Republican National Committee, the party's governing body, launched its own account on TikTok, which is used by six in 10 Americans under 30, according to Pew Research.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle said no other president has done more for young men than Trump "who is working tirelessly to create jobs, cool inflation, increase housing affordability, and more."

John Brabender, a media consultant who helped the Trump campaign target young men in 2024, said without Trump on the ballot in November, Republican candidates will need to do a better job of talking about tax cuts and other policies that directly benefit someone in their 20s, rather than broad indicators like how the stock market is performing.

"I will be the first to say that collectively we've done a poor job of ... communicating directly to the hearts and minds of people at a much younger age," Brabender said.

Brabender's comments echo concerns being expressed by Republican lawmakers, party strategists and White House aides who say the president needs to give more priority to his economic messaging and less to foreign policy. The economy is the top issue for voters, polls show.

NEW HAMPSHIRE BATTLE FOR YOUNG VOTERS

The battle for the attention of young voters can be seen in the race for an open Senate seat in New Hampshire, one of four competitive seats in the chamber that Democrats must defend in November.

U.S. Representative Chris Pappas, the Democratic frontrunner, launched a TikTok account in October and has been working to build a following, with several posts addressing the high cost of housing, a key concern for young voters.

"If you ask someone in their 20s about owning a home, that seems like a far-off notion," Pappas said in an interview. "We've got to make that dream within reach of more people."

The Pappas campaign plans to host a series of events with online influencers to help engage with younger voters.

Former Senator Scott Brown, who is seeking the Republican nomination, told Reuters that his own hobbies - including playing guitar in a rock band and coaching high school basketball - help him connect with younger voters.

"It’s not a stretch for me to walk in and start playing hoops with somebody or get up on stage and jam with some teenagers," said Brown, adding that two staffers, ages 17 and 26, were "social media whizzes" and helping build his presence online.

Brown will speak this month at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm, a hub for political discussion in the early presidential primary state.

Students pass through the institute each day for classes, walking hallways decorated with photographs of presidents who have visited and past rooms filled with more than half a century of political memorabilia, much of it from an era of more convivial bipartisanship.

Several of the students interviewed by Reuters said they longed for a return to more civil discourse. While backing many of Trump's policies, they disliked his caustic style, in which he casts Democrats or other critics as the enemy. All said they were still likely to vote Republican in November.

Tyler Delaney, a 19-year-old freshman, said the divisiveness of Trump's approach will come back to bite him if the Democrats, as expected, take control of the House.

"It gets to a point where you need to have some bipartisanship, and I think that's gonna hit Trump hard after the midterms."

(Reporting by Nathan Layne and Aleksandra Michalska in Manchester and Jason Lange in Washington; Editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)