The Extreme Gender Gap Defining the 2024 Election

• Donald Trump is improving with young men, black and Latino men, and the working class, while Kamala Harris is outperforming with college-educated women

• Both candidates are focusing on media strategies that target those key demographics

• The gender divide is the largest it has been in modern American politics

The story

In the race for the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are each banking on a very different strategy: Harris is doubling down on her appeal to female voters, while Trump is rallying the support of men across all demographics.

In recent months, Trump has hung out at frat houses, attended UFC fights, and has been cultivating significantly higher support among black men than in previous elections. One poll shows him winning one in four black Americans under the age of 50.

Harris has been making significant gains with college-educated voters, especially women. Young women aged 18 to 29 favor Harris by a huge margin of 38 points, while men in the same age group lean toward Trump by 13 points. This creates a staggering 51-point gender gap, the largest seen in any generation.

Meanwhile, Harris is currently leading with women every swing state except Arizona. Her messaging is designed to mobilize women who feel that their rights and freedoms are under threat.

On the other side, Trump’s campaign has been emphasizing law and order, a strong economy for the working class, and a rejection of “woke” ideology, all of which are themes that resonate with male voters.

The media strategy

Trump and Harris have launched highly specialized media campaigns aimed at specific demographics among Generation Z.

Harris this week appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast, the second most popular podcast globally, which dominates the 18- to 24-year-old female audience, a group that has traditionally leaned toward Democratic candidates. During her conversation, Harris and the show’s host, Alex Cooper, spent an outsized amount of time discussing abortion.

Trump’s pitch to young men has involved using platforms that resonate with them. He recently gave a nearly hour-long interview with Theo Von, whose YouTube channel has three million subscribers, and appeals mostly to young men.

Trump may also soon appear on The Joe Rogan Experience, which is the most listened-to podcast in the world. Joe Rogan, likewise, has a predominantly male audience.

What the media gets wrong

The mainstream media overlooks the fact that Kamala Harris’ campaign pitch appears to be focused on a specific subset of women voters — namely, those who are younger and likely unmarried. Married women tend to vote Republican in much higher numbers.

As Harris focuses on abortion to reach young women, the media rarely discuss how young men are flocking to Trump because the progressive messaging from the Democratic Party has completely left them behind.

What’s more, the media lauded Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as a masculine figure who would be relatable to men in the middle of the country. The gains Donald Trump appears to be making with black and Latino men cut against the narrative that the Harris-Walz ticket has much male appeal.

Former President Barack Obama even scolded young black men for not being enthusiastic enough about supporting Harris.

Another overlooked demographic that has been dramatically moving to Trump has been union members. The Teamsters, who have over one million members and have been endorsing Democratic presidential candidates since the 90s, recently refused to endorse Kamala Harris, likely because 60 percent of their members back Trump.

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said this week that Democrats have “f***ed us over for the last 40 years” and even spoke at the Republican National Convention. Blue-collar workers appear to be solidly in Trump’s camp — a demographic Democrats may not be able to afford to lose.

Why it matters

As Harris mobilizes women by focusing on abortion, she risks alienating men who feel increasingly sidelined by a political culture that dismisses their concerns as outdated, irrelevant, or even wrong. For Trump, this is an opportunity to solidify his base of male voters by positioning himself as the defender of traditional values and the working man’s champion.

For Donald Trump to capitalize on his gains with men, however, his campaign will have to ensure they persuade enough of them to vote, as women under 65 tend to vote at higher rates than men.