There’s a new media landscape out there. Trump used it to win.

What young men are doing online played a key role in Trump's re-election. vox.com/culture CULTURE   Nearly half of 18- to 29-year-old men in this country favored Donald Trump this election cycle, [according to early exit poll data](. The president-elect catered to this demographic on livestreams and dudebro podcasts, in niches of the internet that young women and liberals often don't frequent. While the results of the 2024 election came as a shock to many, anyone familiar with the machinations of male-dominated corners of the online world knows the impact of figures like Joe Rogan and Adin Ross. Senior correspondent Rebecca Jennings explains how bros and their favorite influencers managed to rock the vote, and why even chronic social media users might've missed this one. As Jennings writes, "The bro influencer world remains such a mystery to older people, women, or anyone outside of that particular algorithm: The social media landscape is atomized and personalized to each user, yet a lot of men are getting funneled into the same one." —[Melinda Fakuade]( culture editor Is the Gen Z bro media diet to blame? [Two men with beards, one with tattoos along his arms and hand, hold their middle fingers up]( Cassidy Sparrow/Getty Images for FaZe Clan Among the many questions that will be sure to plague Democrats in the months following Kamala Harris’s defeat in the 2024 presidential election: What is happening with Gen Z men? Could it be that growing up in a fundamentally different media environment than generations before them, one populated by individual influencers who often preach the values of entrepreneurship, self-improvement, and, ultimately, self-interest over everything else, galvanized the youngest voters to vote for a man who shared that same spirit? [Or could it be that young men have helped make this content popular because they like what it says?]( What’s clear is that Donald Trump catered to the bro vote and won. Early exit poll data from swing states shows that 18- to 29-year-old men favored Trump 49 percent to 47 percent, while 18- to 29-year-old women favored Kamala Harris by 24 points — the largest gender gap within any age group, and one that defies conventional wisdom that once painted young people as broadly progressive. It’s worth noting that exit poll data can be unreliable and it could take weeks for a clearer picture to emerge. But even as we wait for a more comprehensive demographic breakdown of the election, it’s fair to say that Trump’s campaign was uniquely attuned to Gen Z bros. He appeared on a succession of extremely online streams and podcasts targeting young men, an unusual media strategy that some second-guessed but ended up being vindicated. That Trump would attempt such an outreach shouldn’t come as a shock. Gen Z is leaning more right than its predecessors. This fall, a Harvard Youth Poll showed 18- to 24-year-old men saying they were more likely to identify as conservative than liberal, while men and women of the same age group said they were more conservative than 25- to 29-year-olds. A Gallup and Walton Family Foundation study showed that Gen Z teens are twice as likely to identify as more conservative than their parents in comparison to millennials and their parents 20 years before. This was especially true for male Republican teenagers. Younger people are also more skeptical of major American institutions, including political parties, the government, and the media. Trump’s campaign directly spoke to this demographic: He echoed that same mistrust in institutions, and did so while stopping at seemingly every podcast, Twitch stream, YouTube channel, and TikTok page whose viewership is dominated by Gen Z men and boys. He joined Adin Ross, a now 24-year-old streamer [who once famously looked up and struggled to read the definition of “fascism” on camera](, for an interview during which Ross presented Trump with a Rolex and a Cybertruck. [Read the full story »]( The mounting, undeniable Me Too backlash How Susan Faludi’s feminist classic predicted this moment. [Read the full story »]( The new Jeffrey Epstein tapes and his friendship with Trump, explained Was Jeffrey Epstein really Donald Trump’s “closest friend”? 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