Pollster warns Trump lost young men over affordability, war: 'They're done'

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Friday, November 13, 2026

Rich Baris, a prominent state and national pollster who predicted a Republican midterm rout, claimed that a majority of young men who formerly supported President Donald Trump are angry about his pivot from domestic issues and punished him for it in the election.

During a Thursday appearance on "War Room" with Steve Bannon, Baris argued that support among younger voters is essential as older generations shrink, but that Trump's populist movement hemorrhaged the crucial young male demographic by failing to prioritize the domestic issues it had campaigned on.

"Fox boomer [conservatives] are not even a majority of boomers, and the Silent Gen is almost completely gone. As new generations come into this electorate, if you didn't keep the ones you have and add the new ones, you were going to get crushed. It's that simple," Baris said.

"And why did they vote for you in '24 for the first time in many, many years? Because you promised to focus on their needs. You promised to focus on the issues that Trump ran on, and that just didn't happen," he said.

Baris, who was the only pollster who correctly forecast that Trump would win the 2016 presidential election with 306 electoral votes, went on to say that a debate over whether the Iran war and its economic effects were responsible for the GOP's midterm wipeout is one "we can't afford to have" as the party finds itself in a crisis.

Citing data from the National Signal survey by his Big Data Poll that tracked Trump's presidential approval rating since January 2025, Baris noted that his support began to falter within the first six months amid battles over H-1B visas, Jeffrey Epstein, and the initial U.S. attack on Iran in June 2025. After he launched the Iran war on Feb. 28, Trump's approval continued to decline, recovered somewhat when a peace deal seemed imminent in June and then cratered when the deal fell through.

Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have acknowledged that the Iran war and the Israeli government's influence were largely responsible for the election loss, with Trump telling CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday that voters have "a great dislike, incredibly, for Israel."

Baris said neoconservatives who pushed Trump into another interventionist war in the Middle East deserve political exile for fracturing the populist coalition that had swept him to a landslide victory.

Among those who are most outraged, Baris noted, are young men under 30, who formed a key pillar of Trump's base in 2024, but swung nearly 40 points to Democrats this year. He claimed the consequences of the Iran war have largely destroyed the reputation of Israel among the key demographic, and that its influence must be removed from the Republican Party if it hopes to survive.

"The [Israeli] lobby just took the president's time. It dominated too much. It was just constantly obsessing over Israel, Israel, Israel, Israel — who, by the way, most of these young men didn't give much thought to at all until this," he said. "Now they're done."

Baris said the lobby for Israeli interests in U.S. politics is effectively finished and "will be obliterated soon," adding that young men will "never forgive you for what they view as you hijacking this presidency, which many, many millions of young men around this country believed was literally their last chance to right the ship and make a life for themselves."

In September, Baris and Joshua Lisec published Burn It Down: What the Polls Say Young Americans Really Want, which argued that older generations fail to realize how widespread, deep-seated frustration has politically radicalized Gen Z. The book's description warns: "A wave of disaffected and disillusioned are rising into prominence and power, and they don't want to reform the system; they want to burn it down."

William Wolfe, a former Trump administration official who serves as executive director at the Center for Baptist Leadership, also addressed the political crisis manifesting among disaffected young white men — a topic he said many Evangelical leaders seem unwilling to touch.

During his 40-minute analysis posted Friday of what the Republican Party should learn from its electoral failure, Wolfe noted an affordability crisis among young white men who feel they can't start their own lives played a major role in the GOP's generational midterm defeat.

"In 2024, Donald Trump won young white men by 28 points; 28 points. On November 3, Democrats won young white men by 17 points. That is a staggering 45-point swing," he said.

"I am addressing this not because I'm some white supremacist or white nationalist, but because this is something that nine out of 10 conservative Evangelical leaders and pastors will simply refuse to talk about. Young white men in particular feel like the entire system is rigged against them," he continued.

Wolfe said Trump had represented pushback against the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and H-1B visas crowding out economic opportunities for young white men in the U.S., and that the Republican Party will have to come to terms with their simmering disillusionment.

"In 2024, Donald Trump and the Republicans ran on ending DEI and countering the very real and pervasive anti-white discrimination that infects almost every major institution in America from public education, to the universities and college campuses, to corporate America and yes, even the church," he said.

"There are obviously good and bad ways Christians can address these issues of both affordability and opportunity, and especially how that pertains to young white men in America. But address them we must, because the Republican Party has to address them, too. And Christians should be informing the Republican Party on these issues," he later added.