The conversation illustrates the Democrats’ broader effort to brand themselves as the party of freedom and privacy. On a similar note, a new ad from Progress Action Fund titled “Republicans rubbing you the wrong way” shows a young man masturbating while watching pornography before he’s interrupted by an unnamed member of Congress, who announces that Republicans are “banning porn nationwide”. And earlier this month, the pornography industry began pouring money into ads on explicit websites. More than a dozen pornographers joined together for a $100,000 ad buy warning that “conservatives are planning to criminalize porn”.

The more ribald components of this presidential race reflect Democrats’ eagerness to win back young male voters, a once reliably blue demographic which is now increasingly moving to the centre and the Right. But pornography itself has only recently come to be a Left-wing issue.

In the late 20th century, the anti-porn push was led by feminists such as Andrea Dworkin, who argued that pornography dehumanises and exploits women. More recent anti-pornography activism skewed Left, using social-justice talking points, including complaints about the fetishisation of gay and transgender people and the promotion of unhealthy female body standards. However, the most influential report on the pornography industry in recent years came from the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof, a liberal, exposing the industry leader Pornhub as being rife with child sexual abuse content.

But the Left’s embrace of sex positivity, and the Right’s increased concern over children’s exposure to explicit content, has prompted a partisan turn for pornography. Pornhub has become unavailable in seven red states after laws were passed requiring sites to use age verification to prevent children from consuming their content. Further, Project 2025, a comprehensive 900-page policy proposal written by conservative organisations — from which Trump has taken pains to distance himself — urged strong restrictions on porn.

“Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned,” the proposal reads, accusing porn producers of preying on children and exploiting women.

Young men have long been a core component of the Democratic base, but they’re now flocking to Trump, a trend that could threaten Harris’s race for the White House. This fact has prompted a wave of podcast appearances from both candidates: most recently Trump on The Joe Rogan Experience, while Harris continues to negotiate terms for a potential appearance on the show in the final week of the election.

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is UnHerd’s US correspondent.

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