If Donald Trump reclaims the White House, he will have one voting demographic to thank for it: men. That’s the fundamental theory of the Trump campaign. In the election’s final weeks, the former President and his political operation have sought to activate low-to-mid propensity male voters, particularly young ones, with surgical precision to sweep him back into power.
That’s meant eschewing traditional media interviews in favor of fawning long-form podcast conversations with laddish hosts who draw massive young male audiences, such as Theo Von, Lex Friedman, Logan Paul, the Nelk Boys, and Joe Rogan, who boasts the most popular podcast in America. Instead of trotting out endorsements from political heavy-hitters, they have touted support from professional athletes such as the retired Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre, former Pittsburgh Steelers Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell, and the boxer Jake Paul. At the Palm Beach headquarters, the campaign has built a data mine to target irregular GOP male voters and unregistered young men in swing states who they surmise can tip the scales in Trump’s favor.
Top Trump officials tell TIME the strategy is based on a glaring reality: Most regular voters have deeply entrenched views of Donald Trump. But for the last two years, internal surveys and focus groups have found that a cohort of men under the age of 40 are the most moveable in his direction, especially those less politically engaged and who consume news and information from non-traditional sources. “These people we want to mobilize, where there’s really a high return on investment for us, are not super-political folks,” says a Trump aide. “We are not doing super-political media. You see us talking to younger and more male audiences. It’s data driven.”
The analysis is also informed by historical trendlines. In 2020, President Joe Biden did just as well with women as Hillary Clinton did four years earlier—winning them over by a 13-point…
