Scott Galloway: Democratic Party 'Has Left' Young Men, Not the Other Way Around

Scott Galloway says Democrats have the young-men problem backward: the voters did not walk away from the party, the party walked away from them.

Galloway, the NYU Stern marketing professor who co-hosts Raging Moderates with Jessica Tarlov, made the case on the show. He called the idea that young men are a conservative bloc "convenient and lazy" and predicted they would help Democrats when voters go to the polls on November 3.

"I would argue that young men haven't left the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has left them by telling them they don't have problems. They are the problem," Galloway said. "And I think we're gonna see a lot of young men show up for democratic candidates in a week."

Scott Galloway on Young Men and the Democratic Party

The comments came as Galloway and Tarlov, a Democrat, wrapped up a show mostly spent attacking Republicans. This time Galloway turned on his own side, saying it had misread a group it needs.

"I think it's a convenient and lazy argument or belief in America that young men are basically Neanderthals and are exceptionally conservative and kind of are the problem when it comes to getting in the way of a liberal society," he said.

It's an American one." He added that "Democrats have treated them like a problem to fix instead of voters to win over."

Galloway also argued that young men are no more conservative than earlier generations. In his telling, what changed is that young women moved left.

What the Polling Shows on Gen Z Men

Neither Galloway nor Tarlov named a source for the ideology figures read on the show. They match a Public Religion Research Institute analysis from March 2024. It found that Gen Z men, Americans 18 to 25, were more likely to call themselves liberal than conservative, 38 percent to 31 percent, and that only 24 percent identified as Republican. The same analysis found roughly six in 10 young men support legal abortion in all or most cases. Those numbers come from before the 2024 election.

The election itself went the other way. AP VoteCast found that the gender shifts in the 2024 vote were concentrated among younger voters. Pew Research Center's validated-voter study found men under 50 split 49 percent for Trump to 48 percent for Kamala Harris.

Galloway also said young men backed Trump at about the same rate as older white women, a comparison he admitted is soft. "No poll publishes older white women as its own group so that side is based on proxies," he said. AP VoteCast found Trump's support held steady among white women overall, with slightly more than half backing him, similar to 2020.

The Manosphere's Slipping Numbers

The segment opened on new polling about the podcasters and personalities who courted young men for Trump in 2024. Tarlov said the new polling showed double-digit drops in favorability for Joe Rogan, Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, while Trump, JD Vance and the Republican Party are all viewed unfavorably by men 18 to 30.

Galloway said young men now give Trump only about a third approval, a figure he did not source. The president is unpopular well beyond that group. PolitiKool's polling average puts his approval at 37.5 percent, with 59.4 percent disapproving.

Tarlov agreed the shift was real but questioned how much the podcasters ever mattered. "I don't think it was really about the manosphere necessarily. It was about the promise of better economic outcomes and they didn't get better economic outcomes," she said.

She also cautioned that disappointment with Trump "doesn't translate necessarily into an enormous amount of goodwill towards the democratic party."

What Happens Next

Democrats go into the final stretch ahead on the generic congressional ballot by 8.5 points in PolitiKool's polling average. Whether young men vote in numbers big enough to matter is still open. Galloway is betting they will.