Donald Trump Is Relying on Men. Will They Show Up for Him?
PHILADELPHIA — The city’s oldest bar, McGillin’s Olde Ale House, is perennially festooned with Eagles ephemera, but on the night of the first presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, which happens to be taking place just down the street at the National Constitution Center, the televisions at McGillin’s aren’t playing sports. They’re set to cable news, as the networks count down the hours until the main event.
James Johnson is ready. “It’s game day!” he says. Johnson is 46, white, and from Mississippi. He’s never voted before in his life — at this point, in early September, he’s not even registered.
On paper, Johnson looks like the type of voter who the Trump campaign is relying on to carry them to victory this election cycle: low-propensity voters, mostly men, who might be inclined to support Trump even though didn’t show up in 2020 or 2016.
It’s a risky strategy — low-propensity voters are, by definition, unreliable — but it’s borne out of necessity. At this point in his political career, Trump is a known-quantity, with a fairly consistent ceiling of 47 percent support nationally. He’s not introducing himself to any voters for the first time, nor is he changing his message to appeal to a larger swath of the electorate. Instead, his campaign and its allied outside groups, like Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA and Elon Musk’s America PAC, are focused on driving up his numbers with men who haven’t voted before.
Johnson is in Philadelphia for work, and sharing a pitcher and hot wings with two colleagues attending the same conference: Tamarco White, who is Black and also from Mississippi, and Luis Renta, a native of Puerto Rico. Together, the men represent the voters the Trump campaign is hoping to persuade this election season. There’s just one problem: At this point, in September, only one of the three men at the table — Renta — expresses even a hint of ambivalence about supporting Harris over Trump.
Johnson is planning to cast the very first vote of his life for Harris — in large part because of her position on reproductive rights. He has two sons, both in high school now, but he remembers when he and his wife were first trying to get pregnant.
“It was an ectopic pregnancy,” Johnson recalls. That’s when a fertilized egg implants outside of the uterus; a pregnancy of that kind is not viable and the condition, if left untreated, can lead to a devastating injury or death. His wife needed an abortion, and she got one. Then they got pregnant a second time, and not long into the pregnancy, the baby lost its heartbeat. Again, his wife needed abortion care — the kind of care that women in Mississippi would not be able to access today.
“I don’t have daughters, but I’ve got friends who have daughters who I’ve watched grow up with my sons here, who I have known since they were babies,” Johnson says. “And the percentage of women that get pregnant and carry a baby through full-term the first time around, I don’t know the exact numbers, but… it’s more common to lose that baby the first time out, and maybe even the second time out. You hear people all the time getting pregnant and having no issues at all, but for most of the rest of the world, there’s complications involved.”
Johnson tells me that he’s never voted before because “I never really felt that my one vote mattered, and the person that I, in theory, would have voted for has never lost by one vote, so I didn’t feel bad about it. But this time around, the whole idea of sitting out, not being a part of this? I can’t do that.”
His colleague, Tamarco White, is also planning to vote for Harris. (White, for his part, is not a low-propensity voter; he tells me he has only missed one general election in his life, in 2022, and he voted in the primary that year.) The Trump campaign has reportedly been seeking to make in-roads with Black men like himself, but if that’s the case, White says, he hasn’t heard anything — from surrogates, allies of the campaign, or the Trump campaign itself — making an argument for his vote.
SEVEN WEEKS LATER, eight days out from the election, students at the Community College of Philadelphia, in the heart of the city, are excited to vote. All morning, they have been approaching Ian Connolly, a young organizer with NextGen America, who has a table set out on the quad with donuts, coffee, and answers to questions about where someone can find their polling place, or a sample ballot, or more information about early voting.
Nearby, a volunteer with the Harris campaign is trying to get students’ attention as they pass her on their way to class. I watch, out of earshot, as an animated discussion breaks out between the volunteer and a trio of male students. They fit the demographic that the Trump campaign is hoping to win over: three men in their early 20s, one Hispanic, one white and one Black.
When they walk away from the volunteer I ask the trio how they’re feeling about the upcoming election — and I get three different answers.
Joshua Morales, the student whom the Harris volunteer had unsuccessfully tried to engage, told me he’s not enthusiastic about either major party candidate. “Honestly? I feel like my vote doesn’t matter. I feel like whoever I vote for, I still lose. I think the whole thing itself is broken,” he says.
He doesn’t feel like either Harris or Trump has a real plan for improving the economic prospects of people like himself. “They’re not gonna have all the answers, but it seems like it’s either: We’re gonna give you another stimulus check, or we’re gonna give you money to buy a house.”
Contrary to misinformation spread on TikTok, Trump has not promised new stimulus checks if he’s elected. Harris has proposed a program that would offer down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers, but Morales has become convinced he wouldn’t qualify because his parents own their own home. “Luckily, they were able to buy their house, but now there’s no point for me to vote for her because I’m not gonna get anything,” he says. (He happens to be wrong about this: While the Biden administration proposed a down payment assistance for first-generation home buyers, the Harris campaign’s proposal would make the program available to first-time homebuyers.)
Morales is registered, and planning to vote for a minor party candidate, he says, “Just so it’s not on my record that I didn’t vote.” (He is concerned that a future employer might hold a history of non-voting against him.)
His friend, James Horochiwsky, 20, by contrast, is excited to vote and planning to cast his first ballot in a presidential election for Trump. “I like his — not all his policies — but I like his policies. I feel like he has a plan, you know? Even if some people may not think it’s a good plan.”
Rounding out the trio is Kaven Laroche. He’s voting for Harris. “I think, as a Black person, that’s the only proper choice you can make for your personal betterment,” he says. “[Trump] has made multiple suggestions that he is very bigoted toward Black people. And even outside of Donald Trump, his community of politicians are very racist… Last night, one of his running mates said that Puerto Rico is a trash island in the middle of the ocean.” (Laroche was referring to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, an insult comedian who was invited to speak at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.)
Less than a week out from the election, Trump surrogates are starting to panic about whether their strategy of aggressively targeting men, and low-propensity voters, is working out. “Male turnout in Pennsylvania for Trump has been a disaster,” Trump-supporting manosphere influencer Mike Cernovich wrote on X. “Unless this changes, Kamala Harris takes PA and it’s over.” His concerns were shared by Charlie Kirk, who has been leading efforts to turn out low-propensity voters for Trump via his Chase the Vote program. “Early vote has been disproportionately female. If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple,” Kirk posted. “Men need to GO VOTE NOW.”
Trump himself seems concerned, posting on his Truth Social website that Democrats are “CHEATING BIG in Pennsylvania.”
A few days before the election, I reached back out to Luis Renta, from Puerto Rico, who had been on the fence when we spoke in September. He is currently living in Puerto Rico, so, although he’s a U.S. citizen, he won’t be able to vote in this election.
If he was living in the states, Renta tells me via text, he would be casting his vote for Harris. His view was influenced, in part, by Hinchcliffe. “The expressions by the comedian were very ridiculous saying Puerto Rico is a floating garbage island — that’s a prejudiced and racist comment,” Renta says. “He is a garbage bastard and doesn’t know the ‘Island of Enchantment,’ Puerto Rico.”
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