Americans who agree with a tough, assertive idea of manhood are more likely to support Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, a new YouGov survey finds. This holds true after controlling for other factors, including ideology, race, and gender.
YouGov asked Americans whether they agree or disagree with 16 statements about men, drawn from research by Collin Barnes, Ryan Brown, and Lindsey Osterman — the "Honor Ideology for Manhood Scale." Eight of the statements concern the appropriateness of men using physical aggression in various situations, and eight touch on definitions of what it means to be a "real man." Each statement is intended to express a traditional view of masculine honor.
The statements range from ones that most Americans agree with, such as that "a real man doesn't let other people push him around," to ones that most Americans disagree with, such as "a man has the right to act with physical aggression toward another man who calls him an insulting name."
Regardless of whether a statement was widely agreed to or widely rejected, for every one of the 16 statements about masculine honor, Americans who agree are more likely to support Donald Trump against Kamala Harris than are those who disagree.
Around half of Americans agree with nine or more of the 16 statements, and around half agree with eight or fewer statements. Men, younger adults, Black Americans, and conservatives are more likely to agree with a higher number of the statements about masculine honor.
How honor interacts with race and ideology
Agreement with the Honor Ideology for Manhood statements is associated with political conservatism, both overall and among subsets of Americans grouped by gender or race — with one big exception.
Women, for example, are evenly split by ideology: 29% identify as liberals and 30% as conservatives, with another 31% identifying as moderates. But among women who agree with a majority of the statements about masculine honor, 18% are liberals and 38% conservatives. Among women who don't agree with a majority of the statements, 36% are liberals and 24% are conservatives.
This same relationship also holds true among white Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Americans of other racial identities such as Asian, Native American, or two or more races. Among Hispanic Americans, for example, 40% of people low on the masculine honor scale are liberals, compared to 19% of people high on the masculine honor scale.
But Black Americans are an exception. 64% of Black Americans are high on the masculine honor scale, more than any other major racial group. But there are only minor differences in political ideology between Blacks who are low or high on the masculine honor scale — 33% of Blacks low on the scale are liberals, as are 36% of those high on the scale.
Liberals and moderates who embrace masculine honor are more pro-Trump
Because of the association between belief in masculine honor and political conservatism, it's not surprising that it's also associated with more support for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. This support holds true even among people who identify with the same political ideology. Among both moderates and liberals, people who agree with more of the statements about masculine honor are more likely to support Trump than Harris.
Political moderates overall are leaning toward Harris in the 2024 election: 52% support Harris and 36% support Trump. But the greater the number of masculine honor statements a moderate agrees with, the more likely he or she is to support Trump. Moderates who agree with at least 13 of the 16 statements are evenly split, while Harris leads by a 2-to-1 margin among moderates who agree with few or none of the statements.
See the results of this poll
Methodology: The poll was conducted online among 2,264 U.S. adult citizens on two separate surveys from October 16 - 18, 2024 and October 22 - 25, 2024. A random sample (stratified by gender, age, race, education, geographic region, and voter registration) was selected from the 2019 American Community Survey. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification, and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given prior to November 1, 2022, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (33% Democratic, 31% Republican). The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 4%.
Image: Getty (Klaus Vedfelt)
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