The political gender gap: Is it real?
Why young men are trending right and young women are trending left, including in voting
With the fall election season on the horizon, all eyes are on young voters.
One trend that’s getting lots of attention is the gender gap: Since 2010, a growing proportion of young men and a shrinking proportion of young women have identified as conservative. That has created a growing gender gap in political ideology.
Recent polls suggest that the gender gap among young voters will be a significant factor in the 2024 election. While young voters once tilted toward Democrats regardless of gender, 18- to 29-year-old young men now favor Republicans while young women favor Democrats. The majority of young men are now planning to vote for Donald Trump.
Here’s one of the graphs that started the discussion of the growing gender gap (see Figure 1, an update of Figure 8.5 in Generations). The number of young men identifying as conservative has soared, while the number of young women has shrunk.
Figure 1: Percent of high school seniors identifying as conservative (vs. liberal), 1976-2022. Source: Monitoring the Future. NOTE: Moderates excluded from sample.
A screengrab of the Generations book page with this graph made the rounds on Reddit and X (Twitter) last year. It was often misinterpreted; the Reddit post was headlined “2/3 of 12th grade boys now identify as conservative,” ignoring that I excluded moderates from the graph to allow for a more straightforward comparison. So among young men who chose a side, a little less than 2/3 chose conservative and a little more than 1/3 chose liberal. This was eventually pointed out during the discussion, but it led to a lot of confusion. Many also wanted to see what the numbers looked like if moderates were included.
So what happens if we put moderates back in? That will show us the percentage of each gender identifying as conservative among all of those who had a defined political ideology – liberal, moderate, or conservative (I’ve continued to exclude those choosing “not sure”).
Even with moderates included, there is still a growing gender gap in political ideology among high school seniors. In 2005-09, young men were only 5 percentage points more likely to be conservative than young women, but by 2021-22 they were 21 percentage points more likely (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Percent of high school seniors identifying as conservative (vs. liberal or moderate), 1976-2022. Source: Monitoring the Future.
By the early 2020s, young men were twice as likely to be conservative as young women, even with moderates included.
Other researchers have also found that the gender gap in politics is growing, though with the trend driven primarily by young women becoming more liberal, not by young men becoming more conservative. The growing gender gap appears in many countries around the world, including the UK, South Korea, and Germany.
Others were skeptical. An Atlantic article this spring, for example, argued that there was little proof of a growing gender gap in actual voting behavior as opposed to identifying as conservative or liberal. However, the article mentions just two analyses, one of which didn’t even look at trends over time. In fact, the trend data clearly shows there is proof of a growing gender gap in voting among young adults.
In the Cooperative Election Study, young men (18-24) were only a little more likely than young women to vote for the Republican candidate in their local Congressional race as recently as 2012. Then the gender gap in voting begins to grow. By 2016 it was 10 percentage points, and by 2022 it had grown to 16 percentage points (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Percent of 18- to 24-year-olds voting for the Republican U.S. House candidate, 2006-2022. Source: Cooperative Election Study. NOTE: Includes only those who voted for the Democratic or Republican candidate, excluding those who voted for other candidates or did not vote.
There was also a larger gender gap in votes for president in recent years. Although the largest gender gap by far was in 2016, it was still larger in 2020 (7 percentage points for young men favoring Trump) than in 2008, when slightly more young women than young men voted for McCain, the Republican presidential candidate that year (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: Percent of 18- to 24-year-olds voting for the Republican candidate for president, by gender, 2008-2020. Source: Cooperative Election Study. NOTE: Includes only those who voted for the Democratic or Republican candidate, excluding those who voted for other candidates or did not vote.
The next question, of course, is why.
It would have to be something that changed since 2010, as opposed to a more baked-in sex difference. Here are a few possibilities:
1. Conservatives alienated young women. The larger gender gap begins around 2014, before Trump was the Republican nominee, but it accelerated after that. Trump may have turned off young women. “Even back in 2016, when I was a 12-year-old … and one of the candidates for president was making crude remarks toward women about their body parts—even at that age I felt it wasn’t right,” 19-year-old Isabelle Ems told the Wall Street Journal.
Although the Supreme Court ruling returning abortion law to the states did not happen until 2022, the years prior saw many Republican-leaning states roll back abortion rights. That may have driven some young women away from the Republican party. Some writers have argued that the gender culture war rhetoric from the right, particularly their focus on women having children, has turned off many young women.
2. Liberals alienated young men. “It would seem the white male is the enemy of the left,” 23-year-old Collin Mertz told the Wall Street Journal this month. Right-leaning commentators have argued that the “woke” focus on sexism and racism has made men, particularly white men, feel excluded and discriminated against. That doesn’t necessarily mean Gen Z men don’t support gender equality – more do than in previous generations. But they may be more skeptical of the left’s emphasis on current gender discrimination than young women are. In the Atlantic, Derek Thompson cites data showing an increase 2017-2024 in the number of young men agreeing that the U.S. has gone “too far” in promoting gender equality. As Thompson puts it, “The left has become more adept at shaming toxic masculinity than at showcasing a positive masculinity that is distinct from femininity.”
3. Conservatives appealed to young men. For this extremely online generation, social media influencers have a big impact. Extreme right influencers like Andrew Tate have cracked the code for appealing to young men. Trump likes to present a hyper-masculine image of toughness (“Trump is the toughest of them all,” Hulk Hogan announced at the Republican National Convention this month).
4. Liberals appealed to young women. The left’s embrace of #MeToo may have appealed to young women who saw the reckoning around sexual harassment as long overdue. The left’s emphasis on gender discrimination may have also been appealing. Many young women, however, would point first to liberals’ support of abortion rights. Wall Street Journal polling found a 37-percentage-point gender gap in support for legal abortion among 18- to 29-year-olds.
5. Young men without college plans have shifted right. In Generations, I found that conservatism rose after 2010 among high school seniors who were not planning to go to a four-year college (Figure 8.11). When I broke down the data by gender for this post, I found that the shift toward conservatism among those without college plans was completely driven by young men (see Figure 5; note moderates are excluded, so this is percent conservative among those who identify as either conservative or liberal).
Figure 5: Percent of high school seniors identifying as conservative (vs. liberal), by gender and college plans, 1976-2022. Source: Monitoring the Future. NOTE: Moderates excluded from sample. College plans include those saying they will “probably” or “definitely” graduate with a four-year college degree compared to those saying they “probably” or “definitely” won’t.
Young men without college plans once differed little in political affiliation from those with college plans, but after 2010 that diverged. Young men with college plans have also trended more conservative since then, but that is dwarfed by the trend for those without college plans.
The trend is similar when moderates are included (see Figure 6). In 2021-22, for the first time, the majority of young men with no college plans identified as conservative vs. moderate or liberal.
Figure 6: Percent of high school seniors identifying as conservative (vs. liberal or moderate), by gender and college plans, 1976-2022. Source: Monitoring the Future.
There’s also been an uptick in identifying as conservative among young men with college plans and young women without, but those changes are smaller. The only group showing a decline in identifying as conservative in recent years: Young women with college plans.
The number of high school students planning to go to college has declined in the last 5-10 years, and that decline is much larger among men than women. So the group that has shifted right the most (men without college plans) has grown larger.
The very existence of the gender gap among young adults provides some guidance for campaign staff and activists who want to understand the young adult electorate. But the first four reasons here don’t offer much useful strategy, as many of the issues that divide young men and women seem inherent to the parties and not very subject to change.
The trend by education, though, suggests at least one strategy for Democrats: Find messages that appeal to young men who are not going to college. For example, they could put more emphasis on job programs and vocational training and less on college loan forgiveness. Many young men are searching for purpose in life and have been unable to find it. They need options. Democrats have become the party of the college-educated, but they can’t win without some votes from Americans who didn’t graduate from a four-year college.
For Republicans, the biggest drop in support is among young women with college plans. De-emphasizing the abortion issue, or taking a more moderate position such as allowing exceptions for rape and incest, is key for this group. Not talking about “childless cat ladies,” as JD Vance infamously did, could also help. The number of 18-year-old young women who say they want to have children has fallen in the last decade. They see not having children as an empowering choice. Republicans may not agree with that take, but they should better understand Gen Z young women’s perspective if they hope to earn their votes.
Overall: Yes, there is a growing gender gap in politics, including in voting. Why is more of a mystery. I’d love to hear which of the 5 reasons above sound most compelling to you — and hear new & different theories as well.