Republicans Have a Young Voter Problem

By Becket Adams

Sunday, November 09, 2025

 

Millions of words have been devoted to investigating the Democratic Party’s recent “young men” problem, as it has hemorrhaged support from male voters aged 18 to 29.

 

But on the other side of the aisle is the less-discussed fact that the Republican Party is enduring a more severe version of the Democrats’ demographic crisis: the GOP has lost an even greater share of female voters under 30. Even less discussed is the fact that while Democrats are struggling, albeit pitifully, to win back young men, the right doesn’t seem to realize the seriousness of its own predicament, much less have a plan to fix it.

 

I suppose when you’re already used to surrendering voting blocs, as the Republican Party practically has in past elections with black and, to a lesser extent, Jewish voters, losing one more probably feels more a matter of routine than a sign of impending doom. (Indeed, one likely reason that so much more attention has been paid to the Democrats’ loss of young men is that, unlike the GOP, the Democratic Party is not one to lose entire groups of voters.)

 

Yet, considering that there are eight million more registered female voters than male voters in the United States, and considering that of the overall number of female voters, the 10 percent to 12 percent that fall into the 18-to-29 age bracket are much more politically active than men their age, Republicans cannot afford to accept defeat on this front. Democrats, in some cases, can afford to lose young men and make up the difference with their more politically engaged female counterparts. Republicans have no such cushion.

 

The Republican Party’s struggle to retain young female voters was glaringly obvious again last week, following elections in New York, Virginia, and New Jersey. In the Big Apple, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani won 84 percent of the vote among women aged 18 to 29. In New Jersey, Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill won 81 percent of the same age group. In Virginia, Attorney General-elect Jay Jones won 76 percent of these voters, while Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger won 81 percent.

 

These are huge numbers and evidence of a very real trend.

 

Remember, in the 2024 presidential election, women under 30 favored the Democratic nominee over the Republican by a 17-point margin. In the 2022 midterm elections, women in this age group preferred Democrats over Republicans by a 46-point margin. In the 2020 presidential election, the margin was 32 points. Earlier, in the 2018 midterm elections, the margin was around 33 points.

 

But instead of panic or urgency, common reactions in conservative media and even GOP circles after these kinds of electoral drubbings include mockery, disdain, and general disregard.

 

You’ve probably seen it before: pundits joking/not joking that the 19th Amendment was a “mistake”; legislators dismissing the entire bloc as sad, childless spinsters; certain commentators claiming, based on electoral results, that there is no greater enemy of Western civilization than the young woman; and TV and podcast hosts ridiculing young female voters for being generally stupid. In fact, if you tuned into Fox News last week after Tuesday’s elections, you might have seen host Jesse Watters mocking young, female Mamdani voters as overeducated morons.

 

Single women were the “force” that handed Mamdani the keys to City Hall, Watters said.

 

He continued, supposedly describing the voters the Muslim communist won handily: “You are in an apartment. It’s small. It’s very small. And it’s very expensive. And you haven’t gotten married and had kids and moved out to the suburbs like everybody else.”

 

“So you are in a tiny apartment, and the apartment is getting really expensive because all of these migrants are here now. And it’s also expensive because of the Green New Deal, so your utilities are high, and you’ve got the wrong degree,” Watters said. “You should have gotten a degree in like chemistry, biology, finance, computer science — something useful in this high-tech AI economy. No, you got a degree in, like, Southeast Asian feminist literature. And you’re wondering why you can’t advance in this economy.”

 

(Interestingly enough, this attitude — “My candidate isn’t the problem; the voters are!” — is seen most often on the left whenever a minority bloc flips for a Republican. When this happens, there’s usually a round of accusations that the voters are “race traitors,” that they’re voting against their “own interests,” and so on.)

 

This isn’t meant to single out Watters, or to give New Yorkers — young and old — a pass for electing Mamdani, but rather to highlight a broader lack of concern on the right regarding its loss of young female voters.

 

The Democratic Party’s attempts to reconnect with young men have thus far been deeply stupid and embarrassing. These efforts have included ads about beer, ads warning that Republicans will kidnap your girlfriend, and sending the hapless Tim Walz out into a field with a shotgun to affect a pose of manliness. The Minnesota governor’s ill-conceived outing accomplished the exact opposite. Still, any attempt to win back disaffected voters, no matter how silly, is better than pretending the problem doesn’t exist. Say what you will about the clown car that is the modern-day Democratic Party, but at least it is trying to correct its demographic challenges.

 

The same can’t be said for the Republican Party, which will continue to suffer electoral losses at the hands of young female voters until it takes its demographic problems at least half as seriously as Democrats take theirs.