July 15, 2024 - 8:45pm

→ Young men are dumping the Democrats

Young men have left the Democratic party en masse over the past decade, according to polling data aggregated by the Survey Center on American Life.

Among men under 30, 51% identified as Democrats in 2016, compared to just 39% in 2023. The Democratic Party, for its part, has a “who we serve” page on its website listing more than a dozen demographic groups — women, “ethnic Americans”, the LGBTQ+ community — but omits any specific mention of men.

Possibly aware of this issue, Democrat-aligned organisations have been bankrolling a fresh-faced TikToker to win back young men. “Straight white guys between the ages of 18-29, like myself, should never vote for Donald Trump. It makes no sense,” Harry Sisson captioned a recent video. Well, that settles it…

→ Scottish newspaper apologises for Euros front page

As UnHerd’s Political Editor Tom McTague said today: “It’s funny how much civic nationalism looks like normal nationalism.”

He was talking about SNP deputy Westminster leader Stephen Flynn’s photo with a Spanish player’s shirt celebrating England’s defeat. But he may as well have been talking about The National’s front page on Saturday.

The independence-supporting paper’s cover showed Spanish midfielder Rodri kicking a rotund, ball-like Englishman with a St George’s cross over his fat stomach. Above, it read: “Every summer, they fill up your beaches. They drink all your beer. They make a mess of your plazas. They eat fried breakfasts all day instead of your wonderful food. They retire in your towns and sponge off your public services…”

Today, The National apologised. It said: “We leaned into lazy stereotypes and we shouldn’t have…we got this one wrong.”

Karaoke, fried breakfast food and pints of beer in the sun is what holds the thistle and the rose together. Not that those at The National would ever indulge in such vulgar pleasures…

→ American confidence in police rises dramatically

While the mostly peaceful protests of 2020 maintain an outsized legacy in contemporary America, in some ways the era of “defund the police” may have long since passed. New polling from Gallup reveals that while US citizens remain distrustful of most public institutions, their confidence in the police force has risen eight percentage points since last year, when just 43% expressed “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence. The last time the figure was higher than the present 51% was in 2019, before the death of George Floyd and the ensuing riots across the country.

The rise in public support for the police was the most pronounced among any of the institutions polled by Gallup. This increase is also present among demographic groups which were previously most critical of the thin blue line, such as Americans aged between 18-34, ethnic minorities, and independent voters. So much for the US being a “police state”