DNC chair touts election wins, says he never wants to hear about ‘problem with young men’ again

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin celebrated recent electoral wins by his party and said because of the victories, he doesn’t want to hear about the party having a problem with young male voters ever again. 

“I never want to hear again that the Democratic Party has a problem with young men,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said at a press conference, according to Politico. “We’re going to keep working hard to keep them in our camp and our coalition, for sure, but we won across the board with every major constituency that left our party last year, and that should tell you something again, that the Democratic Party is back.”

Since the 2024 election, the Democratic Party has been working to figure out how to win back voters from key constituencies like young men. But after the victories of both Virginia governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat, and New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a progressive, Martin believes the party is on the right track. 

FORMER DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE TALKS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF HIS PARTY AFTER OFF-YEAR ELECTION SUCCESS

Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin spoke with optimism at a recent press conference about the Democratic Party’s sway with young men. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

He reportedly also said that young people feel “disillusioned” by the lack of job opportunities, something he blamed on President Donald Trump’s administration.

Prior to the off-year elections, James Carville, a veteran strategist for the Democratic Party, warned that far-left messaging and policies were hurting the Democratic Party’s image with young men.

“They were told, ‘The future is female, you must always believe the woman is never wrong, #MeToo,'” Carville said on a podcast in July. “And men are like, ‘S—, do I count? What about my life? I mean, we’re only 48% of the voting population.’”

More recently, he has argued that any future president from either party will have to move in a more economically populist direction to win back young people who cannot afford the same standard of living as their parents and grandparents.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE 2025 ELECTIONS

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville has argued repeatedly that the Democratic Party must jettison far-left cultural messaging and instead embrace economic populism to win back the youth. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Politicon)

In March, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein spoke with a Democratic pollster David Shor about how “75-year-old White men supported Kamala Harris at a significantly higher rate than 20-year-old White men.”

“It is a real shift,” Shor agreed. “This is the thing I am the most shocked by in the last four years — that young people have gone from being the most progressive generation since the Baby Boomers, and maybe even in some ways more so, to becoming potentially the most conservative generation that we’ve experienced maybe in 50 to 60 years.”

NYU professor Scott Galloway argued that the affordability crisis made people turn against Democrats in 2024. He argued in a podcast in November that one of the biggest shifts he noticed in the 2024 election was middle-aged women toward the GOP, suggesting that mothers were voting for Republicans in order to help their struggling sons. 

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Some have argued that NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani rode the same bipartisan wave of populism that President Donald Trump did. (Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images)

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