HEY DEMS, YOU’RE LOOKING GOOD
While Simon Rosenberg (The Hopium Chronicles) does a great job of pole analyzation (who would believe that Republicans cheat?) and is very comforting to us anxious dems, this Brookings article (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-gender-gaps-could-tip-the-presidential-race-in-2024/) does a great job of substantiating Simon’s mantra, “I rather be us than them.”
A great deal has been written about the gender gap ever since it appeared in presidential elections in the 1980s. Since then, many elections have seen a clear difference in the way men and women vote—in general, women tend to vote more frequently for Democratic candidates and men for Republicans (However, married men have been skewing democratic).
This year’s election puts the gender gap front and center for three reasons—one of the candidates could be the first woman president of the United States; the abortion issue has especially high salience for women and could increase their already high turnout; and the election in swing states is incredibly close.
The closeness of the election has created a daily torrent of speculation about which subgroups are leaning to which candidate. Often, as has been pointed out the subgroups in national polls are simply too small to have any statistical significance, making headlines swing wildly. One day, young people are deserting the Democrats; another day, Latinos are flocking to Republicans, and another day, Harris is losing Black men. It’s enough to make your head spin.
The gender subgroup, however, is large enough to avoid that problem because there are usually enough men and women in a standard poll to decrease the margin of error. Pollsters use gender and other demographic information to “weight” their results, and the following analysis shows just how the interaction between polling trends and turnout works.
Although 2024 turnout can’t be predicted, buy looking at the most recent turnout by gender in the 2020 elections some assumptions can be made. If men and women turned out to vote in equal numbers, then, if men preferred Trump by the same margins as women preferred Harris, their votes cancelling each other out, would be expected. But in fact, in recent elections, women have turned out more than men, thus affecting the gender gap. In the last election, women accounted for 54.7% of the electorate and men accounted for 44%. And of course, there are simply more adult women than men in the population, especially among the elderly. In the seven swing states, women composed a larger share of the electorate in 2020 than men, with one exception, Wisconsin, where, according to exit polls, 50% were men and 50% were women.
To understand how the preference gender gap and the turnout gender gap interact, the latest 2024 gender gap polling on presidential preference to the gender gap in 2020 turnout was applied. Of course, as with everything based on polls and history, this could change. Presidential preferences among men and women might shift, and the composition of the 2024 electorate might look very different than the composition of the 2020 electorate. But this exercise illustrates the interactions between the two gender gaps—the one for presidential preference and the one for turnout.
In the must-win state of Pennsylvania, in a recent Marist poll, women supported Harris by 55% to 43% for Trump, while men supported Harris by 44% and Trump by 54%. In the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania, women accounted for more votes than men—they were 53% of the electorate, and men were 47%. There was a total of 6,915,283 ballots cast in Pennsylvania in 2020, most of which were cast by women, amounting to 3,665,100 votes. If the 2024 gender gap in turnout remains close to what it was in 2020, and the preference polls for 2024 remain the same, that would be 2,015,805 votes for Harris versus 1,575,993 votes for Trump among women and 1,430,081 votes for Harris among men and 1,755,099 votes for Trump among men. If the gender gap in presidential preference in 2024 was applied to 2020 turnout numbers, Harris should win Pennsylvania by 114,794 votes or 1.69%. In fact, in 2020, Biden won the state by 1.2% or 81,660 votes.
In North Carolina, using the same analysis Harris would win narrowly by 35,358 votes or 0.65%, putting the state into the blue column. In 2020, Trump won the state by 1.3% or 74,483 votes.
In Michigan, Harris should win the state by 2.54% or 82,720 votes. In 2020, Biden won Wisconsin by 0.63% or 20,682 votes.
In Nevada, Harris would win by 18,551, or 1.36%. In 2020, Biden won the state by two percent with 33,596 votes.
Georgia and Arizona are the only swing states where the 2024 gender gap in presidential preference favors Trump,
In Georgia, Trump would win the state by 117,964 votes or 2.37%. In 2020, Biden had a very narrow victory in Georgia, winning it by 0.24% or 11,779 votes.
In Arizona, Trump would win the state by 25,996 or 0.77% of the vote. In Arizona, Biden had his narrowest win, winning the state by 0.31% with only 10,457 votes.
This exercise shows that if the composition of the electorate between men and women remains the same as it was in 2020, Harris could win Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada—all states Biden won in 2020. She could also win North Carolina (which Biden lost in 2020) but by a very narrow margin. Trump would win Arizona and Georgia, two states Biden won in 2020. This would result in a Harris win in the Electoral College.
Of course, the assumptions in this analysis could easily change next month. The abortion referendum in Arizona, for instance, has the potential to boost the women’s vote past what it was in 2020, and that could be good for Harris. What will not change is that the importance of the gender gap in presidential preference is highly dependent on the existence of a gender gap in turnout. The reality of both gender gaps has hit the Republican Party hard; candidates across the board are scrambling to soften or even repeal their former statements on abortion. And the release of a very strong pro-choice stance by former First Lady Melania Trump means that from the very top of the ticket down, the Republican Party understands that this is their biggest threat.
The bottom line is this—if the gender gap in presidential preference remains the same but men’s turnout increases dramatically relative to 2020, it will be good for Trump; if women’s turnout stays the same as in 2020, it could be a good year for Harris; if it increases, it could be a very good year for her.