Young men who helped President Donald Trump return to the White House aren’t thrilled with how his second term is shaping up.
A new Reuters report suggests sentiment among one of Trump’s key voting blocs is lukewarm at best ahead of the midterms—though the sample size is small.
Trump and Republican leaders are scrambling to protect their House and Senate majorities as polling indicates they could face heavy losses in the fall.
Reuters cited analysts who study youth voting patterns, saying many young men have seen little improvement in their finances since Trump returned to office.
In February, support for Trump among men aged 18-25 plummeted 10 points to 33 percent compared to the same month in 2025, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
A February poll by the center-left group Third Way put support for the president among men aged 18-29 at 32 percent, with 66 percent disapproving.
In a particularly deflating Harvard Youth Poll in December, just 13 percent of young men said they felt that the country was headed in the right direction.
In February, The Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell wrote in The Atlantic that the young voters who flocked to Trump in 2024 were abandoning him “faster than any other voting bloc.”
Trump’s gains with young voters were fueled in part by groups like Turning Point USA, led by controversial conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who championed a return to traditional values.
Reuters reported that some young voters said they supported Trump’s policies, but disliked his combative rhetoric, including his frequent tendency to frame Democrats as the enemy.
Tyler Witzgall, a 20-year-old sophomore at Saint Anselm College (Karoline Leavitt’s alma mater), told Reuters: “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.”
None of the students Reuters spoke with said they regretted voting for Trump. For some, their 2024 vote was driven more by opposition to a continuation of the Biden administration, which they associated with “unchecked immigration and spiraling costs.” Still, they were not thrilled with what they had seen from Trump’s second term so far.
Young voters historically turn out at lower rates in midterm elections; only about 25 percent voted in the last one.
Youth pollster John Della Volpe told Reuters: “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... Mostly because they haven’t felt tangible improvements in their day-to-day lives.”
Ian Pomfret, a 20-year-old sophomore, said immigration enforcement had become a major concern for him. “The ICE thing is a huge problem,” he said, referencing the shooting deaths of unarmed U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good, who were both fatally shot by federal agents in Minnesota.
Pomfret said he still supports Trump overall, but believes enforcement could be handled differently. “I feel like there is a better way of going about it than raiding and killing and instant deportation.”
In a statement to the Daily Beast, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said, “The ultimate poll was November 5th 2024 when nearly 80 million Americans overwhelmingly elected President Trump to deliver on his popular and commonsense agenda.
“No other President in history has accomplished more for young men than President Trump, who is working tirelessly to create jobs, cool inflation, increase housing affordability, and more. The President has already made historic progress not only in America but around the world, and this is just the beginning as his agenda continues taking effect.”
