Last month, after I finished speaking in Spokane, Washington, a 23-year-old man wearing a MAGA hat approached me with a question.
He wanted to know whether I planned to vote in November.
“I don’t like foreign wars. I don’t like six-dollar gas. And I don’t trust people who tell me to stay quiet and vote for politicians who keep promising this won’t happen again,” he said.
So why, he asked, should he vote for someone like that one more time?
The young man had driven two hours to attend the Christian conference where I spoke. His concerns—and his mood—echoed those of many people I have encountered at rallies and events in recent months.
After another speech in Ohio, two young men from the same Republican club stood outside debating whether the pro-Israel address they had just heard was “based.”
After speaking in Spokane, Washington, last month, I was approached by a 23-year-old man in a MAGA hat
“I don’t like foreign wars. I don’t like six-dollar gas. And I don’t trust people who tell me to stay quiet and vote for politicians who keep promising this won’t happen again,” he said
In other words, was the speech authentic?
One of the men said he would not support the Republican Party again until it stopped launching new wars. The other argued that skipping the election would effectively give Congress to Democrats, whom he accused of treating border laws as optional and viewing late-term abortion as a moral achievement. Eventually, the two ended the discussion and walked away.
I have witnessed variations of these arguments in several states. In North Carolina, a young woman who founded a conservative college club told me that the group chat once used to organize campus events had become consumed by disputes over ideological purity.
A Tennessee college student told me he voted in 2024 because he was tired of hearing masculinity described as a disease. Now, however, he says soaring rent and gasoline costs are his biggest concerns—and he does not believe either party has a convincing answer.
I spend much of my time speaking with people like them on college campuses, at conservative conferences and club meetings, and online. Two weeks before the November elections, I have never seen young conservatives this discouraged or so sharply divided.
The polling reflects what I have been hearing in person.
Harvard’s Youth Poll, conducted this spring, found that 35 percent of young Republicans said they would “definitely” vote in November. Among young Democrats, 55 percent said the same.
Cygnal’s September survey of men ages 18 to 30 who said they were certain to vote showed Democrats leading the generic ballot, 57 percent to 40 percent.
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An October poll released by the Alliance for Youth Power PAC found that 60 percent of young voters in Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio—four states featuring competitive Senate races—planned to vote Democratic.
President Trump narrowly carried young men in the 2024 election. So what changed?
The uncomfortable truth is that the conservative youth movement has begun turning against itself.
The surge of energy on college campuses following Charlie Kirk’s assassination was unmistakable. In its aftermath, Turning Point USA reported that its college chapters had grown by roughly 64 percent, while its high-school clubs increased by 180 percent.
Many of these voters came of age during the Biden administration. They used to sound off on concrete things like professors whose grading was influenced by politics, administrators who treated dissent as aggression, institutions that went soft on crime, authority figures who looked down on masculinity and faith and high gas, rent and grocery prices.
That was their lived experience and they were fired up to hear people talk to them about it.
The energy on college campuses after Charlie Kirk’s assassination was real. Turning Point USA college chapters were up roughly 64 percent in the aftermath of his killing
But now, the right is having a family fight in the driveway. It’s exhausting and the numbers of motivated young Republicans has dwindled.
Perhaps this was destined to happen. No political party is perfect and President Trump cannot be expected to cure all of America’s ills in two years. But the reality is that for too many not enough has changed for the better.
Don’t just take my word for it. ‘We haven’t done a damn thing and it’s biting us in the ass right now,’ said Senator John Kennedy earlier this month about efforts to address America’s affordability issues.
Now it’s the Left’s turn to capitalize on the disillusionment. They are recruiting, fundraising and turning clubs and group chats into voter turnout machines.
But here’s my message to my MAGA friend in Spokane and disillusioned young men and women everywhere: No matter how disappointed you are in this administration, I guarantee you that a Democratic-controlled Congress will be worse.
Remember when speech was policed, crime was excused, borders were open and men felt even more disposable? That’s gone but not forgotten. Stop demanding that your friends and allies pass ideological purity tests and coalesce around the issues that unite you.
On November 3rd, wake up and vote.
Brilyn Hollyhand is a 20-year-old political commentator and debater, bestselling author of ‘Make America Talk Again,’ and host of ‘The Brilyn Hollyhand Show’
