The gender gap in American voters is an ever-expanding phenomenon that has become more salient during the last decade, and it could be a major factor in shaping this election. A recent New York Times/Siena poll suggests likely male voters favor Donald Trump by 11 points, while women prefer Kamala Harris by 15. But where the difference really widens is between young adults. Harvard Institute of Politics’ most recent poll estimates that among likely female voters under 30, Harris leads Trump in a two-way matchup by 31 points and, among young men, by 11. However, the gap is not only relevant to elections.
Nearly 40% of young women now identify as liberal, Gallup estimates, and 87% have views closer to the left than the right. Just 25% of men from the same age group identify as liberal, but they are more evenly split between leaning to the right or left. Men haven’t changed their political beliefs much over the years and still tend to be more conservative. The gender gap is likely to continue growing, too, potentially jeopardizing the fabric of American society. How did this happen?
The Enigma of the Gender Gap
The number of women identifying as liberal has been gradually growing since the 1980s, but it was around the turn of the century that the shift accelerated – especially among women under 30. Then the trend seemed to really gain traction following Hilary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 presidential election. Colleges, too, have probably helped young adults cultivate liberal attitudes. “As women entered the workplace and attended university in higher numbers, the foundations of their political engagement began to shift,” wrote Zack Beauchamp in an article for Vox. “The more that women started to believe feminist ideas about equality, the more attracted they became to left-wing parties that held equality as a fundamental value.”
Another theory is that young women have been affected by influencers with extreme political views. The chief data reporter for the Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch, thinks the #MeToo movement may be partly responsible for the gender gap. Perhaps author Rob Henderson has the most interesting theory – what he calls the gender-equality paradox.
“The paradox is straightforward,” claimed Henderson, writing for The Boston Globe. “Societies with higher levels of wealth, political equality, and women in the workforce show larger personal, social, and political differences between men and women. In other words, the wealthier and more egalitarian the country, the larger the gender differences.” It affects much more, too, like “academic preferences, physical aggression, [and] self-esteem.” Personality traits, interest in casual sex, and even the “frequency of crying” are supposedly impacted. “In all these categories,” Henderson wrote, “the differences have been largest in societies that have gone the furthest in attempting to treat women and men the same.”
In sum, “Treating men and women the same makes them different,” said the psychologist Steve Stewart-Williams to The Times of London, “and treating them differently makes them the same.”
This paradox seems far-fetched yet simple enough to be completely possible. Still, it would be remiss not to consider other possibilities. Structural and cultural factors are likely the driving forces, but those words are too broad. It’s like blaming the ocean for a shipwreck.
Depression, the Desire to Belong, and Identity Politics
Would it be wildly inappropriate to suggest people suffering from loneliness and depression might turn to the internet, only to unintentionally land in a liberal bubble and subconsciously allow moral posturing to draw them into adopting views to which they might have otherwise not given much thought? Among people aged 18 to 25 who participated last year in a survey conducted by Harvard Graduate School of Education, 36% had suffered from anxiety, and 29% admitted having experienced depression. More than half of those surveyed said they lacked “meaning or purpose” and claimed that their “mental health was negatively influenced by not knowing what to do with their lives.” Other stressors heavily affecting the participants include financial worries, pressure to be successful, social and political issues, feeling as if the world was falling apart, and “a sense of not mattering to others.”
When people are lonely or depressed, they typically seek distractions, comfort, and escape. “[P]eople haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance,” wrote the philosopher Eric Hoffer in his 1951 book The True Believer. “[T]heir chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness,” Hoffer claimed. “The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others. The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.”
Could some vulnerable young women struggling with their mental health find solace in liberal identity politics? Maybe. But what about men? They aren’t gravitating in large numbers to the left or right, and more men report being lonely than women, according to a study by ScienceDirect. How are men coping? Well, the suicide rate for men in 2022, suggests the CDC, was four times higher than for women. What’s more, as Richard Reeves noted during an interview with CNN, three of every four “deaths of despair” (overdoses, suicides, and alcohol abuse) happen to men. The dead can’t vote.
But, as older generations die and the younger ones mature, the country will probably see more women identifying as liberal. If so, men and women could gradually become more polarized, potentially leading to relationship problems. Fewer families might evolve, leading to a further decline in births – which could have a ubiquitous effect nationwide. America’s fertility rate is already at an unprecedented low, an issue that could one day have disastrous economic implications.
Even if somebody could pinpoint exactly why the gender gap is so vast and still expanding, what would the options be to mitigate the situation? Manipulation? More propaganda? Mind control? Maybe it’s simpler than anybody thinks. Maybe all Americans need is proper leadership to put this country on a better path, one where people can afford groceries and walk the streets without worrying they might be attacked or robbed. “Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us,” wrote Hoffer. “Hence it is people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.”
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