As Kamala Harris and Donald Trump reach out to male voters, here’s what polls show about ‘gender gaps’
Written by ABC AUDIO on October 11, 2024
(NEW YORK) — With just about three weeks until Election Day, the two major party candidates are working hard to reach voters around the country — with a key focus on male voters.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was kicking off a new push to reach male voters in swing states, the Harris campaign confirmed to ABC News.
This included “Good Morning America” co-anchor Michal Strahan’s one-on-one interview that aired on Friday morning, as well as Walz’s Friday travel to Michigan where he met with Black male voters and did local TV interviews focused on hunting and high school football.
He was also attending the Mankato West Scarlets football game on Friday — and giving a pep talk to the team at the Minnesota high school where he taught and also coached football.
Separately, former President Barack Obama on Thursday — as a campaign surrogate for Harris — sternly criticized Black men over what he called “excuses” to not vote for Harris, making comments during a stop at a campaign field office in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood ahead of his rally, saying he finds sitting out or voting for former President Donald Trump “not acceptable.”
Former President Donald Trump has also been working to reach male voters — particularly younger men. That includes joining podcasts such as “Flagrant” with Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh, as well as other recent long interviews with podcast hosts popular among male listeners.
The latest polling still shows a “gender gap” among Harris’ and Trump’s support among men and women, with more men supporting Trump and more women supporting Harris.
A Pew Research Center poll of registered voters published on Thursday found Harris and Trump in a close race nationally among registered voters nationwide — but there’s a larger gap between them among male and female voters.
The poll found 51% of male registered voters supporting Trump, and 43% supporting Harris. Among female registered voters, that is effectively reversed: 52% of female registered voters support Harris, while 43% support Trump.
This is a dynamic political strategists and analysts have noticed. “The way that Donald Trump is trying to run up the numbers with men, [Harris has] got to do the same thing with women,” Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark and a longtime political strategist, told ABC News contributing correspondent and POLITICO Playbook author Rachael Bade in a recent POLITICO Playbook Deep Dive podcast interview.
However, the gender gap is not unprecedented: it has averaged 19 points in presidential exit polls since 1996 (which is because women are 8 to 10 percentage points more likely than men to identify as Democrats). Additionally, Pew’s findings are similar to the gender gap seen in the past two presidential elections, according to exit polls.
In 2020, 53% of men supported Trump while 45% supported then-Vice President Joe Biden; while 57% of women supported Biden and 42% supported Trump. In 2016, 52% of men supported Trump while 41% supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton; but 54% of women supported Clinton while 41% supported Trump.
According to a recent analysis by 538, the gender gap between Harris and Trump has actually narrowed slightly from where it was in August, although the Harvard Youth Poll published in September found a large gap among younger voters of either gender – with Harris up 17 points among young men and up 47 points among young women.
A separate recent analysis from Gallup found that young women have increasingly identified as politically liberal; according to Gallup, that trend is not driven by race or education.
Some recent polls have also delved into Black male support for Harris and Trump, amid uncertainty over whether either candidate is doing enough to reach them. Polling shows that Black men overwhelmingly support Harris, but that Trump has more support from Black men than from Black women.
The Pew Research Center’s poll found that among Black men who are registered voters, 72% support Harris while 20% support Donald Trump. Among Black women who are registered voters, according to Pew, Kamala Harris has 85% support while Donald Trump has only 8%. (As with any poll, there is a higher margin of sampling error for smaller groups within the poll, so these results may be less precise than the poll’s broader findings.)
Other polls indicate somewhat less of a gender gap among Black voters, however. An Associated Press-NORC poll taken in mid-September separately found that 66% of Black male voters say Kamala Harris would make a good president — similar to 64% of Black female voters and 65% of Black voters overall. 21% of Black male voters think Trump would make a good president, as opposed to 11% of Black female voters and 15% of Black voters overall. (The poll did not ask about who respondents would vote for.)
ABC News’ Fritz Farrow, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim, Hannah Demissie, Isabella Murray, Jeff Ballou, Kelsey Walsh, Lalee Ibssa, Mary Bruce, Rachael Bade, Soorin Kim, and Will McDuffie, and 538’s Mary Radcliffe, contributed to this report.
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