Polls suggest that young men are abandoning the Democratic Party in significant numbers, with the share of men under 30 who identify with or lean toward the party dropping from 51 percent in 2016 to 39 percent in 2023, while young women are becoming more liberal than ever. But these young men haven’t necessarily shifted to the GOP — not yet.

Trump is trying to capture disenchanted young men by speaking to them directly. His campaign has cultivated a testosterone-fueled network of male streamers and macho celebrities — like Dana White, head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship — with huge reach among young men.

Democrats might balk at the notion that young and mostly white men need a champion today. But in his book “Of Boys and Men,” scholar Richard Reeves outlines a deepening crisis for males whose economic, academic, and social problems have been largely ignored in progressive circles.

Jesper D’Alesandro, a 22-year-old union plumber, told me while waiting in line for a hot dog that he’s voting for Trump because of his promises like cutting the tax on overtime pay. “I feel like housing is very expensive,” he said. “I feel like you’re never going to get out of your parents’ houses nowadays.” Indeed, more young men than women are living with their parents.

Brothers Yehuda and Asher Kaufman, 19 and 21, own an audiovisual rental company in Rockland County and hope Trump’s overtime policy will help them get more workers. “He’s good for all the people, especially for the Jews,” Asher said. “He’s done a lot of things, and he’s tough on crime. Keep men out of women’s sports is a big thing. Secure the border, the economy, do tax cuts.”

But for the young men at the Long Island rally, there’s something about Trump that goes beyond taxes and immigration — he’s a guys’ guy. And the Democrats are not.

“You can’t be masculine nowadays. If you are, then you get hated against,” Moyer told me. He also disapproves of the left’s agenda on “pushing sex change at young ages.” Later on, Yanni Lagos, a 21-year-old insurance analyst from Queens, said something similar. “The Democratic Party seems to be villainizing masculinity. The white man, which you know I am, is the villain all of a sudden.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Gen Z males are more likely to report facing “gender-based discrimination” than men in older generations. “To the boy or man who feels lusty or restless, the message, implicit or explicit, is all too often, there is something wrong with you,” Reeves wrote in “Of Boys and Men.”

Reeves points out that some major government institutions decline to view them as “vulnerable.” A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention infographic lists groups that are at higher risk for suicide, like veterans, tribal populations, and workers in “certain industries and occupations.” About that last category, it notes in small text that “suicide rates are highest among men working in certain industries” — but fails to explicitly mention that men and boys are four times more likely to commit suicide than women.

A few days before the rally, groups of young, mostly white men wandered around the TD Garden area in Boston scoping out the best place to watch a different kind of fighter. That Saturday night, the UFC was hosting its most highly anticipated event of the year: Noche UFC 306 at The Sphere in Las Vegas.

UFC “is the most electrifying thing in terms of payout, money, personalities. It’s fighting in an octagon, Roman style,” said David Trammell, a 23-year-old accountant from Maine, surrounded by his buddies. The Boston bars showing the fight — from Hurricane’s to The Greatest Bar to Big Night Live — were filled almost exclusively with men, watching round after round of bloodied fighters getting their faces bashed in.

UFC has become a nexus between the Trump campaign and the male streamers, podcasters, and online personalities it’s courting. At a fight in June, Trump and UFC head White made their way toward the octagon, stopping only to shake hands with comedian and UFC enthusiast Theo Von as he stood at the entrance to the arena.

Two months later, Trump was a guest on Von’s podcast. Millions have watched as the popular online pranksters the Nelk Boys, who call White “Uncle Dana,” have hosted Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance, on their podcast — and have started a political action committee to turn out young male voters. Popular streamer Adin Ross interviewed Trump on his Kick channel and asked him about his favorite fighter. At one point the livestream had 500,000 viewers.

Like the men at the Trump rally, Trammell and his friends voiced social and economic woes. They’re struggling to make ends meet, and many have turned to the trades, like 22-year-old Chris from Beverly, a fence builder who asked me not to use his last name out of fears of being ostracized. “Right now we’re tradesmen, but we want to be more than that. We all have our degree, and that’s what sucks.”

Chris is voting for Trump because “when he was president, we were reaping the benefits as the middle class. And right now we’re getting kind of patronized for our thoughts on that.” Trammell, who lamented that “we’re paying Social Security to a number that we won’t even touch when we retire,” is also voting for Trump.

“If you are a straight white man in this country, you are looked at as someone that has I guess ‘privileges’ is what they say, when in reality it’s just nonexistent,” said Charles Thompson. A landscaper and personal trainer who’s hoping to become a police officer, Thompson opposes diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives because he said they lead to hiring people based on skin color instead of ability.

“We are the people that are on the other end of DEI because we’re viewed as people that have all the power. But in reality, we’re broke, young-ass white dudes that have zero power.” He supported Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because of his emphasis on health and mental health but is now supporting Trump.

Several men told me they like UFC because of its sheer athleticism. But Reeves also sees its rising popularity as “a little bit of a subconscious middle finger to the kind of progressive orthodoxy which has steered dangerously close to the idea of just masculinity equals bad.” That’s not dissimilar to the way some men see Trump: He’s a middle finger to a culture that villainizes them.

But are young men fed up enough to cast their ballot? Only a quarter of men between the ages of 18 and 24 vote, but Trump has turned out nontraditional voting blocs before.

Outside The Greatest Bar in Boston, Trevor, a 24-year-old project engineer from Medford who declined to give his last name, said he won’t vote in November. “It doesn’t matter who the figurehead is. We never got any sort of tax breaks on the working class.”

For him, the Republican Party is using men as pawns in a culture war. “All that people can run on now for president is social issues, because they’re never going to put real policies in.”

But the guys on Long Island finally have a fighter in their corner. And they’ll take him, bruises and all.

“The only person I believe that is perfect is Jesus Christ,” Brian Moyer told me. But for all Trump’s transgressions, Moyer still admires him. “He doesn’t need to do this for this country,” he said. “He could have went off somewhere and lived the most lavish life ever. There’s nothing I respect more than that.”