Could the gender divide decide the US presidential election?

The 2024 presidential election "pits young men against young women," said The Wall Street Journal. Voters under 30 are increasingly divided along gender lines, with women favoring Democrats and men increasingly favoring Republicans. That gap isn't just about candidates: It extends to "abortion, student-loan forgiveness and other issues" of concern to young adults. Some of that might reflect different life experiences: A growing share of young women are achieving financial independence, "while fewer young men are reaching that milestone compared with four decades ago."

It's not just young people. There's also a "divorce divide" in American politics, Daniel A. Cox said at the Survey Center on American Life. Recent polling shows that 56% of divorced men are voting for Donald Trump — his most devoted group of voters — compared to 42% of divorced women. That's a sign that as Americans "spend more time uncoupled, they are more likely to develop a tribal approach to politics." And there are concerns the gender gap could ripple more broadly through American culture. "Partisan polarization is bad for the nation," Elizabeth Grace Matthew said at The Hill, "but partisan polarization that correlates ever more with sex is likely to prove even worse."

What did the commentators say?

"The gender war is much weirder than it initially appears," Derek Thompson said at The Atlantic. It might appear that men are shifting right and women to the left, but "it's not so simple." Millions of women will vote for Donald Trump this year, after all. But Republicans and Democrats are "sharply divided by their cultural attitudes toward gender roles and the experience of being a man or woman in America." For example: One survey found that 61% of Democrats think women face discrimination, while only 19% of Republicans agree. The gap isn't about gender — it's about "the role of gender, the meaning of gender, the definition of gender."

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"Gender-divide stories are intuitively appealing but awfully easy to overstate," Zack Beauchamp said at Vox. Yes, women are usually more liberal than men, but the size of the gap "just isn't all that big." "The differences between women and men are not, in any way, the biggest differences we have in American politics," said the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Kathleen Dolan. Maybe that is changing for younger generations, but for now the "narrative is galloping well ahead of the facts."

What next?

The gap is an international phenomenon. "In countries on every continent, an ideological gap has opened up between young men and women," John Burn-Murdoch said at the Financial Times. There are growing divides between "increasingly conservative young men and progressive female contemporaries." That could shape politics around the world for decades to come, not just in the current U.S. election. "The ideology gaps are only growing, and data shows that people's formative political experiences are hard to shake off."

Back in the U.S., the gender gap seems to be widening with Kamala Harris' ascension to the top of the ticket, said NBC News. Recent polls show Harris with a 14- to 16-point lead over Trump among women voters, while Trump beats Harris by as much as 24 points among men. Bottom line: "Trump's advantage among men seems larger than Harris' edge among women." That means the divide could be a "significant factor" in the 2024 race.