The Historic Gender Gap That Wasn’t

Gender differences in vote choice in the 2024 elections were remarkably similar to recent presidential elections, according to an initial analysis of voter patterns from the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. While election watchers theorized that a unique electoral environment – with reproductive health access on the ballot around the country, a Republican nominee held liable for sexual abuse, and a woman at the top of the Democratic ticket – could produce a historic gender gap, exit polling appears to show that the 2024 gender gap is in line with previous election cycles.

CAWP’s full exit poll analysis of the gender gap – which includes data from Edison Research, AP VoteCast, and BSP Research – is available at the post, Gender Differences in 2024 Vote Choice Are Similar to Most Recent Presidential Elections, on the CAWP website. This analysis examines the gender gap with additional information for race/ethnicity, age, educational attainment, and religion, and it includes data visualizations and comparisons to previous election cycles.

“Women have been more likely than men to back Democratic presidential nominees for more than four decades, and this year was no different,” said Kelly Dittmar, CAWP scholar and director of research. “But understanding the significant influence of women voters in any election means accounting for the diversity among them.”

The gender gap in vote choice refers to a difference between the percentage of women and the percentage of men voting for a given candidate, generally the winning candidate. Even when women and men favor the same candidate, they may do so by different margins, resulting in a gender gap. In every presidential election since 1980, a gender gap ranging from four to 12 points has been apparent, with a greater proportion of women than men preferring the Democrat in each case. The beneficiary of this gender gap in vote choice is dependent on the party of the candidate, not candidate gender. In 2024, this trend continues.

According to the Edison exit poll, the gender gap in support of Donald Trump in 2024 was 10 points, with 55% of men and 45% of women supporting Trump. The gender gap in support of Joe Biden in 2020 was 12 points, with 57% of women and 45% of men supporting Biden. The gender gap in support of Trump in 2016 was 11 points, with 52% of men and 41% of women supporting Trump in 2016.

More detailed analysis of gender differences in voting shows:

• Consistent with previous presidential elections, Black women’s support for the Democratic ticket was greater than the support of any other group of women voters. Their support for Harris was also greater than Black men, though the large majority of Black men also voted for the Democratic ticket.
• Data on Latina/o/x voting also vary when it comes to assessing the vote choice of Latino men, but each demonstrate that (1) Latinas’ support for the Democratic presidential candidate was greater than the support of Latino men this year; and (2) the Democratic ticket lost Latina/o/x support while the Republican ticket gained Latina/o/x support from 2020 to 2024.
• A majority of white women continued to support Trump in all 2024 election surveys, consistent with the majorities of white women that have backed the Republican presidential nominee in every election since 2004. White men continue to support the Republican nominees at higher levels than white women.
• In 2024, college-educated white women further cemented their shift to Democratic support since the 2016 presidential election. In contrast, Trump maintained his strong support among non-college-educated white women.
• White born-again or evangelical women voters also continued to prove essential to Trump’s support in 2024, with their male counterparts providing even more support to the Trump/Vance ticket. In contrast, majorities of white men and women with no religious affiliation and those identifying as Jewish supported the Harris/Walz ticket, with women in both groups even more likely than their male counterparts to vote for the Democrats.
• Consistent with previous elections, young women (aged 18-29) backed the Democratic presidential nominee more than women in other age cohorts and more than young men in 2024. A majority of young women backed the Harris/Walz ticket, and the plurality of young men backed Trump/Vance. Despite pre-election reports, the gender gap among this age group was slightly smaller than the gap in 2020. 

Learn more about the gender gap in 2024 at Gender Differences in 2024 Vote Choice Are Similar to Most Recent Presidential Elections, the gender gap throughout history at our Gender Gap: Voting Choices in Presidential Elections page, and about voter participation at our Gender Differences in Voter Turnout page.