Mainstream media outlets continue to suggest the presidential election will be decided by a historically wide gender gap, with women much more likely to side with Kamala Harris and men with Donald Trump. The latest Washington Monthly Gender Gap Tracker shows a gap that’s wide, but not that wide.
True, the average gap in the polls may not be the final gap on election day. And the range of possibilities in the polls is quite vast. Some do show a historically wide gap. Others show a gap that’s surprisingly narrow.
To refresh: the Gender Gap Tracker follows both the gender gap — the distance between the margin among women and the margin among men — and the gender gap tilt — the difference between the female lead and the male lead. Only polls with gender breakdowns are included in the Tracker’s averages.
Here are the Gender Gap and Gender Gap Tilt numbers for the last three presidential elections, according to post-election analysis conducted by the political data firm Catalist:
2020
GENDER GAP: 19
GENDER GAP TILT: Joe Biden +7
WOMEN
Joe Biden: 56
Donald Trump: 43
Margin: Biden +13
MEN
Donald Trump: 52
Joe Biden: 46
Margin: Trump +6
2016
GENDER GAP: 24
GENDER GAP TILT: Hillary Clinton +2
WOMEN
Hillary Clinton: 54
Donald Trump: 41
Margin: Clinton +13
MEN
Donald Trump: 52
Hillary Clinton: 41
Margin: Trump +11
2012
GENDER GAP: 15
GENDER GAP TILT: Barack Obama +7
WOMEN
Barack Obama: 55
Mitt Romney: 44
Margin: Obama +11
MEN
Mitt Romney: 51
Barack Obama: 47
Margin: Romney +4
Trump’s entrance to the presidential arena in 2016 immediately widened the gender gap. In fact, the 24-point gap in 2016 was the largest recorded in exit polls since at least 1972. (The 2016 gap was the same in exit polling as in the Catalist analysis.)
The only similarly sized gender gap was the twenty-two-point divide in 2000, when men sided with George W. Bush by 11 points, and women did the same with Al Gore.
But almost every presidential election since 1980 has had a double-digit gender gap. And in almost every one since 1996, Democrats have won the female vote, and Republicans have won the male vote.
With that history in mind, how is Harris faring?
Below are the Week 9 Gender Gap Tracker numbers, with comparisons to Week 8. (Numbers don’t always add up perfectly because of the effects of rounding.)
WASHINGTON MONTHLY GENDER GAP TRACKER
31 OCTOBER EDITION
GENDER GAP: 18.7 (change from last week: down 2.7)
GENDER GAP TILT: Harris +1.3 (0.6 shift toward Trump)
OVERALL
Harris: 48.5
Trump: 47.5
Margin: Harris +1.0 (0.3-point shift toward Trump)
WOMEN
Harris: 53.0
Trump: 43.0
Margin: Harris +10 (1.6-point shift toward Trump)
MEN
Trump: 52.4
Harris: 43.7
Margin: Trump +8.7 (1.1-point shift toward Harris)
The 18.7 point gender gap resembles 2020’s 19-point gap, when Trump lost to Biden, but is not as wide as 2016’s 24-point gap, when Trump defeated Clinton.
Among men, Harris’s 8.7-point deficit is between Biden’s 6 and Clinton’s 11. Among women, Harris’s 10-point lead is three points behind Biden’s and Clinton’s.
In sum, Harris’ performance is a little soft in both genders compared to Biden’s victorious performance, but stronger with men compared to Clinton’s loss.
That’s still enough for Harris to cling to a one-point national lead. Conventional wisdom has been that the Democratic presidential candidate needs a larger national lead to win swing states. But polling this year has not shown wide divergence between national and battleground numbers, so that assumption may not hold.
But these are just averages. Individual national polls tell wildly different stories.
For example, last week’s New York Times national poll, with Harris and Trump tied, did preview a historically sized gender gap of 26 points, with Trump winning men by 14 and losing women by 12.
But this week’s poll from the Economist, in which Harris held a one-point lead, saw Harris with a modest 7-point lead among women, yet losing men by just 5. That would mean a gap of only 12 points, the narrowest since 2008.
One poll I didn’t include in the weekly tracker (because of its long sampling period over three-and-a-half weeks) comes from the Cooperative Election Study, which collected responses from nearly 50,000 people. Unlike every other national poll I’ve seen, CES found Harris winning among women (by 8) and men (by 1).
State polls are not consistent either. Take the trio of CNN battleground surveys released yesterday.
Harris leads in Michigan by 5, with an 8-point lead among women, and a tie with men. Gender gap: 8.
Pennsylvania is tied, with Trump winning men by only 4, and Harris with a slight 3-point female edge. Gender gap: 7
But Wisconsin had a 29-point gap, with Harris racking up a 21-point margin among women, and Trump taking men by 8, leading to a 6-point win for Harris.
The wide range of possibilities may be indicative of an electorate that’s more fluid — with some still grappling with the possibility of a woman president — than the steady flow of tight polling otherwise suggests.
Consider a recent exchange between a CNN reporter and a Georgia barber in a men’s barbershop. Asked if some men don’t want to vote for a female president, he says “I hear that a lot, [that] women are too emotional to run the country.” Asked what he thinks, he initially dodges by saying, “I’m married. You think I’m about to answer that?” But after noting that “my wife runs my household” he concludes, “You know what? If they run the household… I believe they can do it. I just thought about it.”
Such internal deliberations among undecided voters may continue right up to election day, and polls may not capture it all.
This week’s batch of polls in the Tracker were almost all completely sampled before Trump’s racist and misogynistic Madison Square Garden rally last Sunday. And Trump’s patriarchal comments from Wednesday’s Wisconsin rally, that he will “protect” women “whether the women like it or not,” may have happened too late in the race for polls to detect how women, and men, react.
After nine weeks of tracking the gender gap, we are left with much uncertainty — not only regarding who will win, but also regarding what men and women are thinking about the prospect of a female president, the sexist attacks Harris has endured, and the double standards often applied to her candidacy. •
