Will the gender gap decide the 2024 elections?

Men and women have been voting differently in presidential elections for decades.

But could the gender gap be the deciding factor in this year’s razor-thin race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump?

The final ABC News/Ipsos poll for Election Published Sunday, Day estimated the gender gap among all likely voters at 16 points. Harris had an 11-point lead among women, 53% to 42%, while Trump had a 5-point lead among men, 50% to 45%.

A 538 analysis of cross-tabulations from national polls in October from the top-rated pollsters found the average gender gap was slightly wider: 10 points for Harris among women and 9 points for Trump among men.

That is comparable to historical norms. The gender gap has averaged 19 points in presidential exit polls since 1996.

However, some observers believe it could reach a new level in 2024.

“With a woman versus a man at the top and with the prominence of the abortion issue in the wake of the Dobbs decision, we could have a historically large gender gap approaching a gender gap this year,” said longtime Republican Rep. Whit Ayres pollster, told ABC News.

The formula for Harris’ success would be to win women by more than he loses men. The opposite applies to Trump.

“When you’re talking about dead heat races in seven swing states, anything could be the deciding factor,” Ayres said.

Both campaigns are trying to turn the divide to their advantage

Harris has made reproductive freedom a central part of her bid for the White House. In recent weeks she has… gathered with Beyoncé for tens of thousands of people in Texas about abortion rights, visited a doctor’s office in battleground Michigan and was deployed high-profile surrogates like Michelle Obama to talk about the impact on women’s health after the fall of Roe v. Wade.

“I don’t think you can underestimate the power of the abortion issue,” Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster, told ABC News.

That’s especially true for younger women, Lake said. Harris has an overwhelming lead (40 percentage points) among women ages 19 to 29, compared to Trump’s 5-point lead among men in that same age range, ABC News and Ipsos found.

“They’re registered in record numbers, but we need to get them all to vote,” Lake said of Gen Z women.

Harris’ campaign has also achieved much among men, including black men, through its economic proposals. Polls earlier this fall showed black male support for Harris declining relative to President Joe Biden’s numbers within the group, though Harris appeared to be regaining ground. In the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, Harris had the support of 76% of Black men (Biden won among Black men by 79% in 2020) and 87% of Black women.

Trump, meanwhile, has focused on driving men to the polls, especially younger and apolitical men who vote at lower rates than other groups.

Both Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, sat down popular podcast host Joe Rogan. Trump surrounded himself with hyper-masculine figures along the way, including Elon Musk and Hulk Hogan. He embodied the personality of a strong man and doubled down on authoritarian rhetoric.

White men and women have long been among the Republican Party’s strongest constituencies. Trump leads among white men by 13 points, according to the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, and among non-college-educated white men and women by about 30 points. And while he leads with white women, the largest voting bloc in the US, Trump trails Harris by just four points, 50% to 46%. (Trump won white women by 11 points over Biden in 2020.)

Trump has also stepped up his efforts Bringing Spanish voters to justicewhich also has its own significant gender gap, more so this campaign than during his previous presidential bids. The ABC News/Ipsos survey found that among Hispanic voters, an average of 55% support for Harris and 41% for Trump. (Biden won Hispanics by 33 points in 2020, according to ABC News’ exit poll.)

“I think Trump is trying to raise his voice among the people,” Ayres said. “I haven’t seen much help for women.”

The former president’s recent message to women is that he will “protect” them “whether the women like it or not” — a statement that went against the guidance of advisers, whom he claimed found the statement “very inappropriate’. Harris quickly took the comment as “offensive to everyone.”

Turnout will be crucial

According to the University of Florida, more than 75 million Americans have voted early Election laboratory.

Women outpace men in early election turnout, the data show, from 54% to 43.6% as of Sunday. This is in line with previous elections, including in 2020, when women made up 53% of the electorate.

Tom Bonier, a Democratic strategist and CEO of the data firm TargetSmart, said one notable finding is that women are voting at higher rates than men, by “pretty significant margins in every battleground state except Nevada.”

It is not known which candidate early voters will cast their ballots for, and unlike in 2020, when Trump discouraged voting by mail, more Republicans are voting early this year.

But Democrats see optimism on the margins.

“There are simply more women in the electorate and they appear to be voting more,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has worked on several presidential campaigns. “If you add in their preference for Harris over Trump, this should be very good news for Harris.”

Mary Radcliffe of 538 contributed to this report.