Boys vs. girls election intensifies
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
This is the most gendered election America has seen — and the split has only deepened with Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket instead of Joe Biden.
Why it matters: Gender is rapidly becoming one of the starkest divisions in American politics.
Flashback: Young men and women used to have similar voting habits, but over the last two decades, women have been moving steadily left and men, right.
- That's making it an easy strategy for each side to pick a gender to court.
- "The Democrats try to win as the women's party, and the Republicans try to win as the men's party. That's terrible for all sorts of reasons," says Richard Reeves, the founder of the new American Institute for Boys and Men and a former Brookings Institution fellow.
You see it in the polling numbers. Harris has a 14-point lead over Trump among likely women voters (55% to 41%) in the latest New York Times/Siena College poll. Trump has a 17-point lead among men (56% to 39%).
- You see it in what the candidates themselves are saying: During a news conference last week, Trump said he’s "way up" with white males, but, "it could be that I'll be affected somewhat with Black females."
- You see it in their media strategies: Trump is appearing on podcasts that are popular among young men and doing interviews with Elon Musk, while Harris’ campaign is leaning into memes that appeal to young women.
What they're saying: "The kind of excitement and energy around Kamala, the memes, really suddenly changing the whole vibe. I think that that could move a lot of women voters, especially independent women and suburban women," says Lori Marso, a political scientist at Union College in New York.
- "Seeing two old white men competing as our presidential candidates was just so depressing."
Zoom in: Young women are indeed moving further left. There’s been a surge in activism on issues like abortion and climate change.
- Among men, the trend is less a move toward the right and more a move away from the left, Reeves says.
- Men’s depression, anxiety and drug overdose rates are on the rise. Suicide rates among working-class white men have climbed, and they accounted for 69% of suicide deaths in 2022. But these issues rarely come up in Democrats’ talking points.
"If people fear on the left that simply acknowledging the genuine issues faced by boys and men marks you out as a reactionary, as you've gone over to the dark side, they won't," says Reeves. "Their failure to do that has created a huge vacuum. That vacuum has been filled by people on the right."
What to watch: The Harris campaign is leaning into "Coach Walz" to try to narrow Trump’s commanding lead among men, Politico notes, though it’s not yet clear whether Tim Walz will be able to pick off any male voters.
- "This election was supposed to be about women post-Dobbs, and it turns out it may be about men. And more specifically about ideas of masculinity," says Reeves.
