The voting difference between men and women was unremarkable compared to recent history

NEW YORK – Donald Trump waged a campaign on hypermasculinity, actively courting young men in particular with interviews on popular male-oriented podcasts.

In the final weeks of the campaign, the former president and many of his surrogates leaned on sexist comments and jokes about Vice President Kamala Harris.

Some of his supporters, including former presidential rival Nikki Haley, warned that the former president risked exacerbating his ongoing gender gap with Harris. Prominent surrogates, from billionaire Elon Musk to Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point, called on men to vote in large numbers to counter Harris’ expected strength among women.

Ultimately, the voice difference between men and women was unremarkable by recent historical standards.

Here are some takeaways from AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide:

The gender gap was large, but not unusual

The research shows that men are more likely than women to support President-elect Trump. That gap in voting preferences has largely remained the same, even as voting choice among men and women has changed modestly.

Harris had the advantage among women, winning 53% to Trump’s 46%, but that margin was slightly smaller than President Joe Biden’s in 2020, according to the survey. In 2020, VoteCast showed Biden winning 55% of women , while 43% went for Trump.

And it’s nothing new: According to the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University, the majority of women have favored the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1996.

Trump also impressed men

Trump enjoyed small gains among both men and women, with Harris modestly underperforming compared to Biden in 2020. Fifty-four percent of men supported Trump in 2024, compared to 51% in 2020.

The shifts by gender were concentrated among younger voters, as well as among Black and Latino voters. White voters of all genders and older voters of all genders voted the same way in 2024 as they did in 2020.

Women under 30 voted for Harris over Trump, but it was a slightly smaller majority supporting her, at 58%, than Biden in 2020, at 65%.

There were indications that the Trump campaign’s overture to young men was working: More than half of men under 30 supported Trump over Harris, but in 2020 the split was reversed.

Trump has also roughly doubled his share of young black men, making him a key Democratic voting base. About three in 10 black men under 45 voted for Trump, about double the number he got in 2020. Latino men, in turn, were less open to the Democratic candidate than in 2020. About half of Latino men voted for Harris, compared to about six in 10 who chose Biden.

Economic concerns cut across genders

This was the first presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade, and it was the second chance in history for Americans to elect their first female president.

These issues, along with concerns about sexist rhetoric coming from the Trump camp, were important to many women. But concerns about immigration and inflation weighed more heavily on many voters and across gender boundaries.

Kelly Dittmar, research director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said that while Trump may not have been the main reason for his victory, he has successfully played on fears that gender norms and power dynamics are being disrupted.

Dittmar said the results showed that “a majority of voters were willing to ignore misogyny and racism, and some were even motivated by it.”

“We don’t always recognize the extent to which our citizens actually invest in sexism or racism when it comes to political power,” Dittmar said.

Only about 1 in 10 women said electing a female president was the most important factor in their votes, and 4 in 10 women said it was not a motivator at all. Black women were most driven by the possibility of a first female president, with about a third saying it was the most important factor in their vote choice.

About 9 in 10 black women and 6 in 10 Latina women supported Harris. Just under half of white women supported the vice president.

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Associated Press writer Cora Lewis in New York contributed to this story.

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AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for Fox News, PBS NewsHour, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. The survey of more than 120,000 voters lasted eight days and ended when the polling stations closed. The interviews took place in English and Spanish. The survey combines a random sample of registered voters from state voter files; self-identified registered voters using NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population; and self-identified registered voters selected from online panels who are not likely to vote. The margin of sampling error for voters is estimated at plus or minus 0.4 percentage points. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://ap.org/votecast.