How Donald Trump won the campus ‘Bro Vote’

Donald Trump’s “machismo” campaign successfully energised an “untapped reservoir” of young white male college voters to help drive him to victory, according to academics.

Exit polls show a huge swing towards the Republican among young voters in this month’s presidential election, which Rachel Blum, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma, said was leading experts to question “conventional wisdom” around college students.

Dr Blum said the idea that college students were reliably Democratic was based on the narratives around elite universities – but the reality was that many students vote the way their parents do and the election results could be evidence of a “backlash” against that stereotype.

“Conservative students are more comfortable being conservative. There has always been an untapped reservoir of very conservative students in many, many colleges and universities in at least half the country,” she said.

Videos of college students – often white men – wildly celebrating Mr Trump’s win at a number of institutions, including the University of Missouri and Liberty University, went viral.

Although too early for a full breakdown of the results, Dr Blum said it appeared that progressive young voters did not turn out for Kamala Harris in the numbers they did for Joe Biden – in contrast to young conservatives.

“Young men don’t tend to turn out a lot, so any increase in that turnout and any increase in their political engagement is significant,” she said.

Some have credited Barron Trump, a student at New York University’s Stern School of Business, for directing his father to appear on several podcasts popular in college dormitories, including those hosted by Joe Rogan, Logan Paul and Theo Von.

Others have pointed towards the activist and author Charlie Kirk as key – even dubbing him “the right’s new kingmaker”. The 31-year-old is the founder of Turning Point USA, which bills itself as the largest conservative youth activist organisation in the country, and is host of one of the country’s most popular podcasts.

College is a scam, but the day of reckoning has come. President Trump's "secret weapon" will be to:

- Target the radical left accreditation system
- Purge the Marxist DEI bureaucrats
- Unleash the DOJ to prosecute schools that continue pushing racial discrimination
- Seize… pic.twitter.com/5wsWieQEbd

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— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) November 11, 2024

Matthew Boedy, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of North Georgia, said Mr Kirk and his campus rallies had a “massive impact” in mobilising young conservatives.

“[Students] do vote overwhelmingly Democratic but not in high numbers,” he said.

“If you have a fickle conservative person…and you go knock on their door and you give them a podcast and you give them a red hat and you give them something to cheer about at an event…you have them.”

In his campaigning for Mr Trump, which often featured attacks higher education itself, Mr Kirk sought to energise what he has called the “Bro Vote”. Since election day, he has boasted of signing up thousands of disengaged young men in fraternities in Arizona State University alone.

On his “You’re Being Brainwashed Tour”, he would typically debate left-wing students in swing-state colleges – with those videos then being viewed millions of times online, and often appealing to non-college educated voters as well.

According to Dr Boedy, Mr Trump and Mr Kirk were popular on college campuses and among fraternities because they were seen as possessing “machismo”, were aggressive towards their opponents and were able to “own the libs”.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com