As Democrats win big, thirst traps of male candidates take social media by storm

Sen.-elect James Talarico (D-TX) speaks during a midterm election night event on Nov. 3, 2026 in Austin, Texas. Brandon Bell/Getty Images hide caption

If you're on social media, there's a good chance you've seen the videos: people getting hot and bothered about the young men Democrats just elected.

"I'm looking at you, Rob Sand. I'm looking at you, Jon Ossoff. I'm looking at you, El-Sayed," said fitness coach Jesse Barton, reacting to the midterm results. "I am looking, I am not the only one, and I'm very happy about what I see."

There are debates over candidates' relative levels of hotness. There are a lot of AI-generated images. And there are many, many montages of the politicians set to sexy pop music.

One of the most viral pieces of content was a parody Tiger Beat magazine cover featuring Democratic men … which Manoushka Guerrier, an LA-based chef and content-creator, took one step further.

"I created the entire Tiger Beat style personality quiz, complete with the different boy band personas," she said. The quiz gives people matches including "the Babyface" (Texas Sen.-elect James Talarico) and "the Heartthrob" (Colorado Rep.-elect Manny Rutinel).

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Guerrier pays a lot of attention to politics, and she emphasizes that these guys' looks are just a bonus.

"They're young and they're ballsy and they're smart, and they're not just smart; they're brilliant," she says.

The tidal wave of attention on these young men creates a striking contrast to the first Trump midterm, in 2018. That election — after the Women's March, Me Too and the long list of assault and misconduct allegations against President Trump — yielded a record-setting wave of Democratic women. It all suggests that the thirsty social media posts aren't just a cheeky trend; they also say a lot about how Democrats have responded to the Trump era.

A response to Trump

Two main forces are behind the wave of attention on these men according to Christina Wolbrecht, a political science professor at Notre Dame University.

"I think it's a function of our kind of society-wide debate about masculinity," she said. "And I also think it's about age."

The age side is straightforward — just ahead of the midterms, a majority of likely voters said they favored candidates with new ideas over those with experience in the job, according to a NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll.

The masculinity side, meanwhile, is in response to MAGA and its elevation of a very specific type of manhood, Wolbrecht said.

"For 10-plus years, Donald Trump has presented one very distinct version of masculinity," she said. "It's very much power over [others]. It's very much power through wealth and status."

Manliness took center stage on the Democratic side this election. Candidates leaned into it, with people like Rutinel and Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El Sayed posting weightlifting videos. El Sayed at one point did a video spoofing Love Island.

Voters noticed, posting admiring videos well before the election. Meanwhile, the media noticed and amplified this narrative, with profiles and think pieces throughout the midterm cycle, and reporting on Democrats' "rugged" and "authentic" candidates.

'That's a girly thing to be, is a Democrat'

Amplifying young, "manly" men may have boosted the party in this election. That's because Democrats had a problem after Kamala Harris lost the presidency in 2024, according to Democratic strategist Monica Venske.

"The feeling within the straight male demographic, if you will, [was] that it just wasn't cool to be a Democrat," she said. "It wasn't sexy to be a Democrat. It's not manly to be a Democrat. That's a girly thing to be, is a Democrat."

That's why she started the Instagram account Boyfriends We Deserve, where she highlights attractive Democrats — mostly men, but a few women as well.

Venske explains she is careful in how she posts about women's looks — unlike when she talks about men, like Montana's incoming Democratic congressman.

Sam Forstag poses for a portrait at an event on a ranch outside of Drummond, Montana on October 7, 2026. Tailyr Irvine for NPR hide caption

"Like when I call Sam Forstag hot, it will most likely never, ever hurt him," she said. "But I can call someone like Keisha Lance Bottoms hot and that could hurt her every time."

She said she instead will call the women "baddies" or focus on their hair, as opposed to highlighting their bodies or overall looks.

To Venske, the Boyfriends We Deserve posts are part of making it clear that the Democratic party is a big tent that includes young men.

"I'm like, 'Look at all these manly guys who are Democrats,'" she said. "Sam Forstag is an example I usually give. He was like a smokejumper in Montana. And in his announcement video for Congress, he's fixing up a truck. If a guy who is jumping out of planes to put out fires and fixing up trucks can be a Democrat, you can be a Democrat, I promise."

…But Democratic women won, too

All of that said, plenty of Democratic women ran and won this year, including several historic firsts: Georgia's Keisha Lance Bottoms, for example, will be the first Black woman governor. New Mexico's Deb Haaland will be the first Native American woman governor. Minnesota's Peggy Flanagan will be the nation's first Native American woman senator.

That highlights a big difference between this midterm and 2018's wave of women.

Since that election, Democrats have seen Joe Biden defeat Trump, and then watched a second woman lose the presidency to Trump. And while Democrats most certainly do still elect women — far more than Republicans — the masculinity of their male candidates received outsized attention this year.

It's possible, then, that the attention on Democratic men isn't simply lighthearted, but is part of Democrats' continual conversation about electability.

"I hear it from all sorts of people with all sorts of engagement that 2016 and 2024 proved that it took old-guy, aviator sunglasses Joe Biden to defeat Trump," Wolbrecht said, "and we need more of that and not more Kamala Harrises or Hillary Clintons."

"I think that's a mistake," she added quickly. "I think it's a misunderstanding of what happened in '16 and in '24. But the meaning we put on elections has consequences and it really shapes what parties do strategically going forward."

Democrats have struggled to win over men in recent elections. For example, Harris won 43 percent of men overall in 2024. This year, the party won 50 percent of the men's vote.

Guerrier disagrees that the attention on candidates' looks is about electability, but she thinks that for a lot of voters, this election was about changing the Democratic Party's story.

"It was just like these guys came out of nowhere, and it was just so refreshing that, wow, we can get out of this darkness and into something that is hopeful," she said.

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