Breanah McGregor is a 20-year-old university student from Sydney who has had Australia’s upcoming federal election at the forefront of her mind ever since Donald Trump won his second campaign for presidency in the United States.

“I see so much of Trump’s ideology reflected in Australia’s conservative parties, Peter Dutton, and most prominently in the young, voting, men in our communities,” she says.

“It genuinely scares me to think that so many of the boys I went to school with, worked with, are friends with, could have all this hatred and prejudice under their skin. I’ve only started really noticing it in the last two or three years.”

And McGregor isn’t the only one who has noticed the shift to the right for masses of young men, both in Australia and globally.

In Europe, right wing parties have been gaining major traction, with a significant increase in votes than previous elections. Most notably, in September, Germany’s far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), won nearly a quarter of the national vote, marking the highest numbers for a far-right party in the country since the Second World War.

In Australia, the likelihood of a far right party being founded and making growth as substantial as the AfD has since their foundation in 2013, is low.

But, data indicates Australian men have been making a gradual shift to conservative political views in recent years. Polling in 2024 found while Australian men and women largely fall somewhere in the centre on the political spectrum, the gap is widening, with 37 per cent of women leaning left, and 33 per cent of men leaning right.

With election day, May 3, inching closer, consistent polling suggests despite Gen Z being dubbed the ‘woke generation’, Gen Z men are becoming increasingly conservative in their political ideology.

“You’d think that men in this day and age, within a ‘woke’ agenda would be more aware of the vastly negative effects these political opinions can have on a society and Australia. It makes me feel unsafe,” McGregor said.

Recent data from Financial Review/Freshwater Polls found that 37 per cent of men aged 18 and 34 are backing Peter Dutton in the election, compared to 27 per cent of women in the same age category. The rise in polling for Dutton may go beyond the preferential party-based ideology of the Coalition, but instead reflect the growth of populist-based party leaders, most prominently Trump.

They try to present themselves as these beacons for free speech, but all they do is invite other men with the exact same opinions, exact same politics as them, and then blurt out xenophobia, misogyny, racism.

The Coalition’s campaign platform, some have noted, reflects similar sentiments to that of the US President. Dutton’s push for “government efficiency” to crack down on “wasteful spending”, such as the “divisive Voice referendum” has echoes of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency in the US, run by Elon Musk.

But why are increasing numbers of young men gravitating to a right-wing political ideology?

A recent Bloomberg investigation attributes a portion of this to the rise of right-leaning podcasters, and with Australians named “the most avid podcast listeners”, the influence these creators have on this demographic is strong. The investigation found across 2,000 videos by some of the most prominent male podcasters, including Joe Rogan, Adin Ross, Nelk Boys and Theo Von, 37 per cent of them had ‘voting’ or ‘election’ as a prominent topic of discussion.

And it is something these podcasters are aware of.

Kyle Forgeard, a member of the Nelk Boys, a podcast that promotes far-right idealism, is an avid supporter of Trump and acknowledged in a recent interview: “We definitely helped with the young male vote.”

As digital spaces with an impressionable audience they have been criticised for misusing their platforms, and disguising beneath a laissez-faire, conversational tone about political discussion, the promotion of harmful, biased views, that enable misinformation.

While podcasting has become a key form of news, entertainment, and education, the new wave of ‘manosphere’ type content remains largely unchecked.

“At the end of the day, they are a breeding ground for misogyny,” says Stella Coppola, a digital media student and active feminist.

“They try to present themselves as these beacons for free speech, but all they do is invite other men with the exact same opinions, exact same politics as them, and then blurt out xenophobia, misogyny, racism, and every other form of prejudice that does not affect a straight, white, rich man.”

It is an emergent trend that has been the topic of much research and debate. In 2024, Guardian Australia’s technology reporter Josh Taylor and Dr Stephanie Wescott, an expert in online misogyny found algorithms on Meta platforms were “amplifying sexist and misogynistic content” to young boys.

While The Man Cave, a men’s mental health service based in Melbourne, found a third of teenage boys “look up” to Andrew Tate, a controversial figure charged with rape in the UK and rape and human trafficking in Romania, who outwardly expresses violent and misogynistic rhetoric against women.

Psychologist and head of impact at The Man Cave, Matt Defina, told the ABC: “Young men are really connected to some of his key messages around drive and motivation.

“That’s really dangerous because then they get caught up in his other more damaging views.”

A UK study that explored the impacts of these creators and their content, found 69 per cent of boys aged 11 to 14 have been exposed to content that promotes misogyny, while at the same time 70 per cent of teachers had reported an increase in sexist language in the classroom.

In Australia, with over half-a-million young voters casting their ballots for the first time in just a few weeks, the result may yet be influenced by young men who want to see their own increasingly right-leaning views reflected in their elected leaders.

Main image by Central News.