“Men want to feel like they can provide for the household,” Matt told my colleague Katie Stallard at a Trump rally in Salem, Virginia on 2 November. “It’s insane how hard it is now, as a man, to support your family.” It was, Barger said, “almost impossible to allow your wife to stay at home and raise kids while a man wants to provide.” The world as it is, he said, “makes men feel small” and forces women to work outside the home – “out of their roles.” He is 33 years old. Compare those words to 24-year-old Sophie’s at a Harris rally in Philadelphia two days later: “For me it’s women’s reproductive rights,” she said when asked by Katie what the most important issue in the election was.
The so-called gender gap in US politics – the difference between the voting intentions of women and men – is nothing new. There’s been one in every presidential election since 1980. The first two presidential elections in which Donald Trump stood for office – 2016 and 2020 – didn’t offer up a noticeably larger gap than other presidential contests of the past either. The 11-point difference in 2016 (the first time he stood against a female Democratic nominee) equalled that between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole in 1996, according to global polling company Edison.
So the gap itself isn’t really noteworthy. It’s the trend with the youngest voters that we need to worry about. In the run-up to this US election, plenty predicted that the widest gender gap would appear between the men and women of Gen Z – those born from 1997 onwards. Polling of six swing states by the New York Times in the summer revealed an enormous 51-point divide along gender lines in those aged 18-29, far larger than in any other generation. Data shared with the New Statesman from polling earlier this week by John Zogby Strategies put the gap at more than 70 points. For the veteran independent pollster, this election was young men versus young women.
There are a number of reasons why this might be the case: it is young women who are most likely to be impacted by restrictions on their reproductive rights brought about by the overturning of Roe V Wade – something they blame unequivocally on the last Trump administration. As women have benefited from increased equality, they have overtaken men in terms of education and entered the workplace in ever-growing numbers, leaving some men feeling confused as to what their role in society is. But this is less a case of a male conservative lurch, and far more a case of women’s increasing liberal zeal.
Less explored than the reason why young men and women see the world so differently is how this difference will impact young people’s future. It is, of course, possible to be friends with those you disagree with – it often makes for a more fulfilling relationship. But that’s very different to settling down and sharing a life with someone with a profoundly different worldview. Are young liberal women really going to want to date men who see no issue with taking away their reproductive rights? Who see the home as a woman’s rightful place? Will these young, Trump-supporting men want to make a home with women whose politics they at best don’t understand, and at worst abhor?
The election of Trump will have many consequences. But the realisation of Vice-President elect JD Vance’s vision of the family will not be one of them. There can be no incentivising couples to have more children when men and women have increasingly incompatible values. Maybe these Gen-Z women who want children will turn to another route to become mothers: holding Trump to his promise for support for IVF. Far from the Republican victory heralding a new era of family-first policies, it looks increasingly likely there will be fewer of the traditional families they yearn for.
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