Trump vs. Harris Poised to be Largest Gender Divide in Election History

The November presidential election could see the biggest gender divide in history, according to polling and experts.

The latest New York Times and Siena College poll, conducted between August 5 and 9 among 1,973 likely voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, showed there was a 35-point gender gap between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. The poll showed Trump with a 14-point lead among men, 52 percent to 39 percent. Among women, Harris had a 21-point lead, with 56 percent support to Trump's 35 percent.

Earlier national polls showed a large gender gap between the two candidates.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a moderated conversation with former Trump administration national security official Olivia Troye and former Republican voter Amanda Stratton on July 17 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The 2024 U.S. election could... Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a moderated conversation with former Trump administration national security official Olivia Troye and former Republican voter Amanda Stratton on July 17 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The 2024 U.S. election could see the biggest gender divide in history. More Chris duMond/Getty Images

A Times/Siena poll, conducted between July 22 and 24, showed Harris with a 14-point lead among likely female voters (55 percent to 41 percent), while Trump had a 17-point lead among men (56 percent to 39 percent). That amounts to a 31-point gender gap. The poll surveyed 1,142 likely voters nationwide.

The gender gap was even bigger in the latest Quinnipiac University poll in which Harris had a 16-point lead among women (56 percent to 40 percent), while men sided with Trump by 23 points (60 percent to 37 percent) for a 39-point gender gap.

In 2016, an NBC News exit poll found the net gender gap at 24 points, while it stood at 23 points in 2020, according to NBC.

Newsweek has contacted the Harris campaign for comment via email.

For Melissa Deckman, Professor of Public Affairs at Washington College and author of The Politics of Generation Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape our Democracy, the figures show that the fault lines between men and women are getting bigger.

"We may have a larger-than-normal gender gap in 2024," she told Newsweek, adding that there is a gender gap emerging "among Gen Z with respect to public opinion, voting behavior and political engagement more broadly."

"Gen Z women are far more liberal than Gen Z men," she said.

A 2021 Gallup poll analyzed by the Survey Center on American Life showed that 44 percent of women ages 18 to 29 identified as liberal compared to 25 percent of men.

Figures show that this political divergence between young men and women could translate into the Republicans winning young men for the first time in more than two decades, while Democrats will continue to win young women.

A merger of Wall Street Journal polls in February and July showed that if Trump continues to win support from a majority of men under 30, as he was before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, young men could favor Trump in this election, with men under 30 backing Trump over Biden by 14 points. In 2020, young men backed Biden by 15 points, according to AP Votecast estimates.

"Gen Z men supporting Trump and Gen Z women supporting Trump is a reflection of the wholesale rejection of a weak, failed and dangerously liberal Kamala Harris and Tim Walz ticket, the most radical in American history," Trump Communications Director Steven Cheung told Newsweek.

Young women backed Biden by 30 points, according to the merged polls, virtually unchanged from 2020.

Experts have put forward a number of explanations as to why this political divide is occurring between the genders for Gen Z.

For Jackson Katz, Ph.D., an author and expert on gender violence prevention education, it is symptomatic of Democratic efforts.

"Democrats have been very poor in their outreach to men, especially young men who live online," he told Newsweek. "Throughout the virtual universe, on social media, podcasts and the misogynous manosphere, the message they've heard for years is 'the Democrats hate men, especially white men.'

"It's presented as obvious, an objective statement of fact. I have long argued that the Dems need to respond to this aggressively and speak directly to men, including young men, and say 'we see you, we hear you and we care about you.'"

Kellen Habibelahy, Chairman of the High School Republican Federation of Virginia, agreed, telling Newsweek that he believes most of Harris' messaging does not target men.

"Kamala keeps talking about issues Americans don't face every day," he said. "Much of her messaging targets women, not men. She spends most of her time talking about abortion but neglects kitchen table issues like the fentanyl crisis killing tens of thousands of Americans, the crisis at our border, or the fact that many Americans simply cannot afford groceries or gas. One of the biggest concerns I keep hearing is that many young people are worried they won't be able to afford a home."

Carrie Baker, a Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Smith College in Massachusetts, added: "Republicans have been targeting young men for years, developing messages that resonate with young men, which Democrats have not done."

"When Dems ignore men and focus on 'first woman' messaging, they alienate men, but if they message on the policy positions, they do really well with young men," she told Newsweek.

According to a recent study by the Young Men's Research Initiative conducted from July 9 to 23, men ages 18 to 29 were more likely to be supportive of female candidates over Trump when presented with their policies, including support for high-paying jobs and affordable housing, rather than when they were presented with arguments centered around the importance of having the first female president. The study surveyed 1,092 men in that age group.

"The trend of young men drifting away from Democrats, and their increasing sexism, should be of huge concern to candidates up and down the ticket," the Young Men's Research Initiative study's author wrote.

"But we can't give up on half of a generation that will be able to vote for another 50 years. This research shows that we can make inroads by changing how we talk about Democratic issues that young men already support. We should be using targeted messaging to reach them."

Young Republican men have also reported feeling abandoned by the Democrats because of what they see as a push for diversity by the party that has supported policies such as planned parenthood and paid family leave, and has seen two women run for president.

"It would seem the white male is the enemy of the left," Collin Mertz, a 23-year-old farmer in North Dakota, told the Wall Street Journal.

An April survey by the Pew Research Center found that 23 percent of men—and 33 percent of men who backed Trump—believed the advancement of women has come at their expense.

However, Deckman doubts that young men really support Trump out of an urge to make a stand against "feminist wokeness." Instead, she said, the reason is likely to be rooted in the economic anxiety experienced by Gen Z men.

According to Pew, a greater percentage of women under 30 are achieving financial independence compared to young women in 1980, while fewer young men are reaching that milestone compared to four decades ago. Meanwhile, in certain U.S. cities, young women are outpacing young men in median annual income and are more likely than young men to live apart from their parents.

"Gen Z men may opt for Trump for economic reasons, not as a stand against feminist wokeness," Deckman said. "There is a long line of political science research showing that men more generally vote pocket issues than women, and given that Gen Z expresses a lot more economic anxiety than older Americans, even in a relatively healthy economy, Gen Z men may find the GOP this November a better option.

"Young men may find Harris more appealing if she is leading with economic messaging than if she frames her campaign in historic firsts."

Despite the struggles the Democrats may face to appeal to men, for Katz and Baker, there is one positive sign that the party is starting to campaign with male voters in mind—the selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as Harris' nominee for Vice President.

"I think Harris' choice of Walz is brilliant because he will play really well with young men because he was a football coach and high school teacher [he was also in the military]," Baker said. "I think Dems are finally thinking about gender in terms of how to reach men, which is a critical and long-overdue approach."

Katz added that Walz, who served in the military for 24 years and was a successful high school football coach, "has many of the credentials of a traditional man," and this will help the Democrats reach out to white men, he said.

"This is the GOP's worst nightmare, because it punctures their idea that "real men" vote Republican," Katz said.