The gender gap among voters is becoming an abyss in the 2024 election
A new Fox News Poll further demonstrated a difference in the preference of female and male voters in America. The 2024 election shows a wide gender gap in what voters value.
According to CNN's poll assessment, since Harris assumed the nomination, women have lined up further toward the Democratic Party and men toward the Republican Party.
The gap is now more prominent than ever. However, older polls show that the tendency started even when Biden was the Democratic nominee for the Presidential race.
A CNN analysis from early June, when Mr. Biden was still the Democratic candidate, concluded that the President had narrative advantages over Mr. Trump with female voters but lacked rapport with young males.
Now, the Fox News poll shows an even steeper difference. CNN said the poll showed that female voters favored Vice President Harris over Donald Trump by 10%.
On the other hand, male voters favor former President Trump over Ms. Harris by 12 points. The divide is deeper in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
The gap is also evident when examining specific traits in the candidates. According to the network, many polls have measured the perception of Republican and Democratic candidates as strong.
Only 10% of women qualify Trump over Harris as a strong candidate. Half the voters qualify the Democratic candidate with that attribute, slightly more than Biden in 2020.
On the other hand, 30% of men view Trump as a stronger candidate than Harris. In a Marquette poll quoted by CNN, white women were 25% less likely to qualify the Republican as stronger than Harris than white males.
Framing Ms. Harris as weak is one of the Trump campaign strategies. According to Politico, the main goal of Republican super PACs was to portray Harris as a "soft-on-crime radical" in TV commercials.
However, Mr. Trump has struggled to introduce that narrative in his rallies and press conferences, and the Republican candidate has struggled to regain the narrative advantage against the new candidate.
Frank Luntz, a pollster and communication strategy expert, told CNN that the gap narrows as voters age. The divide is larger among young men and women.
The gap can be associated with the vital issues that Democrats and Republicans are defending in this election. Women and men value some things more than others.
According to a Wall Street Journal poll, issues like abortion and anti-right-wing ideology are top issues for young women (18-29) in the 2024 election.
On the other side, men are concerned about the economy and care little about reproductive rights. They also consider democracy a top issue, while women don't.
The gap is also visible in the approval of some top policies of the Biden-Harris administration. The WSJ poll showed that almost half of young women supported student loan forgiveness, while only 2% of men did.