President Trump has a gender gap problem. Hillary Clinton won among female voters by about 14 percent in November, and recent polling consistently shows the president is more popular among men.
That holds true among white evangelical Christians — some of Trump's most reliable supporters — with one key exception: White evangelical women in the millennial generation are actually more likely to back Trump (73 percent gave him their vote in 2016) than their male counterparts (60 percent voted Trump):
"Christian conservative women are realizing their voice isn't being heard," says Kelsey Gold, a Trump supporter who recently graduated from Liberty University and coordinated a group called Young Women for America. "Most of us don't condone the rhetoric that Trump uses, but most support his policies," she added in comments for a piece exploring this unusual dynamic in Christianity Today.
Scott Waller, chair of the political science department at the evangelical Biola University, suggested Trump's positions on abortion and national security as plausible explanations for this "really interesting statistic that kind of defies the national trend." Waller argues Trump's "black-and-white description" of issues like terrorism and immigration might appeal to a "more traditional evangelical understanding that we're all naturally depraved [which] plays into a kind of need for government to restrain and protect."