The gender gap’s impact in voting behavior and its causes, according to UC Davis students and staff
By GRACIELA TIU — features@theaggie.org
In the weeks leading up to the 2024 presidential election, many political figures predicted that the gender gap in voting behavior would widen significantly compared to previous election years. Defined by the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) as “the difference between the percentage of women and the percentage of men voting for a given candidate,” the gender gap quantifies the effects of variances in political beliefs and voting practices across the gender binary.
Since 1996, women have statistically preferred the democratic candidate in presidential elections, with the gap fluctuating each election year but remaining present, according to CAWP. Additionally, after 2000, men and women have overall favored different presidential candidates, with one exception in 2008.
However, categorizing men and women into monoliths in their voting behavior would not thoroughly explain their electoral choices. Many demographic differences beyond gender such as race, socioeconomic class, age and religion can also influence a person’s vote. Still, examining the different factors contributing to the overall gender gap can point out interesting dynamics about gender and politics in contemporary American society.
Although widely predicted to increase, the gender gap in the 2024 presidential election shrank slightly from 2020, according to Associated Press Votecast data, with Vice President Kamala Harris winning a smaller percentage of women in 2024 compared to President Joe Biden in 2020. Even so, the gender gap remained at a large and observable size, similar to the past 20 years.
Policies and campaign promises prioritized by the two presidential candidates seemed to be one reason men and women largely voted differently. Harris’ campaign often primarily focused on the importance of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy, starkly contrasting former President Donald Trump’s campaign.
For Sydney Carlson, a fourth-year environmental policy analysis and planning major, this issue heavily influenced her choice on the ballot.
“Roe v. Wade played a role in my perspective for the election,” Carlson said. “There were so many other rights protected under Roe v. Wade which made women safer throughout the U.S. To me, the idea of voting for someone who is so publicly proud of overturning this right broke my heart.”
The Trump Campaign also zeroed in on its anti-transgender platform and subsequently its push for the upholding of traditional gender ideals, often using hateful rhetoric to push against transgender rights in many rallies and campaign ads.
“These attacks are consistent with the gender beliefs that have fueled Trump’s support, whereby fear of gender disruption motivates a policing of sex and gender binaries that constrains conceptions of gender, promotes conformity and upholds an unequal balance of power to men over women,” a recent Forbes article reads.
With these two significant topics of reproductive justice and transgender rights, American men and women have shown their differing beliefs and priorities on a large scale. Although many other demographic factors can contribute, gender undoubtedly plays a significant role in developing these platform-based opinions.
Along with caring about platforms and policy positions, many voters — particularly women — felt concerned about Trump’s long history of disrespectful commentary toward women and the multitude of sexual misconduct allegations he has faced since the 1970s, leading some to prefer Harris instead.
Carlson also described how she thought some of the negative rhetoric Trump used against Harris led some male voters to make their decisions accordingly.
“He referred to [Harris] in a disrespectful way, which I think caused a lot of people to follow [those] beliefs as well,” Carlson said.
Bias, whether unconscious or explicit, may have also contributed to gender-based differences in voting patterns. Both voters and candidates can exhibit forms of bias that impact their perceptions and opinions, particularly toward female candidates like Harris.
“In Western society, we have a prevailing notion of what power means that is inherently masculine,” Dr. Amber E. Boydstun, a professor and a chair of the UC Davis Department of Political Science, said. “That comes from our storybooks and our history and all of it. And so I think that any female candidate is going to have an uphill battle because we don’t have the same kind of mental model for what a powerful woman looks like in a positive way that we do for a male leader.”
Even if a female candidate like Harris did not focus her campaign on her gender identity, voters still might display these biases and blur the lines between true political preferences and expressions of gender-based biases.
“I think even when we break down individuals to their qualities, their qualifications [and] their background, it’s still hard for some people to separate them from the traditionality of how we view men and women,” Mia Hamilton, a second-year sustainable environmental design major, said.
Another notable driver of the gender gap is the idea that social identities heavily influence party alignment.
“Gender shapes experiences, expectations, and interests and, consequently, influences the US political system in a multitude of ways,” Heather L. Ondercin, an assistant professor in the Department of Government and Justice Studies at Appalachian State University, said in a 2017 journal article for Political Research Quarterly. “Furthermore, men’s and women’s social identities are fundamentally linked to their sex and form the basis of their partisan identification. This theory implies the gender gap’s formation is at least partially a result of men and women adjusting their partisan preferences based on the representation of their gendered social identity in the political parties.”
This linkage of gender and partisan identity seems to make many voters resonate with the candidate or party that appeals most directly to how they want to feel represented politically.
“I think Harris really appeals to the people in the women’s sense, like she’s backing us up on account of our rights as women,” Hamilton said. “I think a lot of the stuff that Trump votes for is very progressive in the male sense — like it kind of gives power to the men versus power to the women. Although [we] definitely see a lot of men voting for Kamala and a lot of women voting for Trump, I think it’s really easy to kind of identify them with their gender identity.”
Similarly, many men identified with the Trump campaign’s centering around traditional masculinity.
“I think in this particular election, one of the aspects of President Trump’s candidacy that had a lot of draw for a lot of people across genders and across races was this a sense of masculinity,” Boydstun said. “Even though Harris, I think, tried very hard not to make gender the center of her campaign, I think that the kind of machismo element of Trump’s messaging meant that gender was very much at the center of this election.”
An additional factor that may have led some men to vote for Trump could have been that the Harris Campaign’s focus on women’s rights and progress led some men to feel left behind, potentially fearing the loss of their privilege and power.
“Frustrated at not feeling understood, many then get sucked into a bro-culture of Donald Trump or Elon Musk,” John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Institute of Politics, said in a BBC news article. “They look at who the Democrats prioritize — women, abortion rights, LGTBQ culture — and they ask ‘what about us?’”
This “bro-culture” aligns with the pushback against women’s progress that some American men have been demonstrating in the past few years.
“Donald Trump has emphasized a traditional — and even toxic -– masculinity in each of his presidential campaigns, feeding on and fueling the backlash to gender progress already evident among Americans,” Kelly Dittmar’s Forbes article reads. “In 2016, for example, more than two-thirds of Trump supporters told the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) that ‘society is becoming too soft and feminine.’ Multiple researchers found that hostile sexism, which encompasses perceptions that women’s advancement comes at a cost to men, was a significant predictor of votes for Donald Trump among men and women alike.”
Overall opinions about gender inequality and partisan support have been proven to correlate, with 84% of Trump voters believing gender equality efforts are “going too far” and 86% of Harris supporters believing that they are “not going far enough,” according to a CBS News poll.
The gender gap, influenced by these numerous factors, serves as a striking reminder that American attitudes and beliefs about gender permeate our daily lives — not just the presidential election.
“I think for a lot of women, it’s not that surprising,” Hamilton said. “Just because I don’t think it’s a particularly unique experience to be a woman who feels qualified for a certain role or a reward and have that blindsided by a male counterpart.”
Written by: Graciela Tiu — features@theaggie.org
