A new poll finds that Vice President Harris faces a major challenge in winning over male voters, and is winning more support from male voters than from female voters in key states such as Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina.
The gender gap between Democrats and Republicans is nothing new, but it's becoming especially pronounced in a close presidential election.
Former President Trump famously had problems with female voters, and new polling suggests Harris is having just as big a problem with male voters in some states.
At the Democratic Convention in Chicago last month, Harris and her political team largely downplayed the possibility of her making history as the first woman to serve as president, with political experts saying male voters in some parts of the country remain wary of putting a woman in the Oval Office.
A Senate Democratic leader said sexism and misogyny remain powerful forces in the nation's battleground states.
“Misogyny is a deadly drug,” the source joked, adding that the same issue reared its ugly head when Hillary Clinton was the Democratic nominee eight years ago.
“When people said they hated Hillary Clinton, that was ignored,” the Democrat added.
Clinton lost the male vote to Trump by 11 points (41 percent to 52 percent) in 2016, but won the female vote by 13 points (54 percent to 41 percent).
The Trump campaign has sought to exploit the gender gap by flooding battleground states with ads focusing on the economy, inflation, illegal immigration and crime to appeal to young male voters.
“It's a battle of the sexes,” said Ross K. Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University, about the trend of male voters supporting Trump and moving away from Harris. “The sense is that every time a woman steps up, a man is bound to lose.”
“Statistics in some cases support these fears among men,” he added, pointing to a decline in the number of men attending college and some of their earning power.
On average, women still earn 84 cents for every dollar men earn.
Baker said Harris' choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a former high school football coach, as her running mate was likely intended to boost the Democratic candidate's support among male voters.
“I think they saw him as a man's man and someone who could connect with some very alienated male voters who feel that national policy trends in recent years have been tilted in favor of women,” he said.
A new poll shows that in Pennsylvania, one of the biggest swing states on the 2024 electoral map, male voters are turning away from Harris and voting for Trump.
A new CNN/SSRS poll finds that Trump leads Harris by 15 points among Pennsylvania's male voters (55 percent to 40 percent), while Harris leads Trump by 11 points among Pennsylvania's female voters (53 percent to 42 percent).
By comparison, a CNN/SSRS poll conducted in March showed Trump leading Biden narrowly among Pennsylvania's male voters, 51 percent to 41 percent.
JJ Abbott, a Democratic strategist supporting Harris in Pennsylvania, said the Trump campaign has flooded the state with attack ads aimed at appealing to young male voters.
“From a spending standpoint, Pennsylvania has been completely inundated with advertising for months now, whereas other battleground states outside of Georgia haven't really been like that,” he said. “The Trump campaign and its associated super PACs have basically said publicly that Pennsylvania is their game plan.”
“They're taking a tough stance on the state,” he added. “The Trump campaign has made no secret that they see young men as a key demographic to target.”
According to the latest CNN/SSRS poll, male voters in Nevada are also leaning heavily toward Trump and away from Harris.
A new survey of Nevada voters found that Trump has an 18-point lead among male voters (57 percent to 39 percent), while Harris has a 16-point lead among female voters (55 percent to 39 percent).
Jon Ralston, CEO of the Nevada Independent and a leading political commentator in the state, said Nevada voters view the presidential election differently than they do races for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
“I think people view the presidential election differently than other races,” he said.
While Nevada has two women serving in the senate, Ralston noted that “Nevada has never had a woman governor.”
“Nevada has a large working class population and lower higher educational attainment than other states. It has a large Hispanic population and there is evidence that some Hispanic men are very conservative on some issues, which may contribute to this issue,” he said of the gender gap shown in the poll.
But Ralston also expressed general skepticism about polls in Nevada because of the difficulty of accurately gauging public opinion.
Recent polls have also shown Trump leading with women in North Carolina, another battleground state.
An East Carolina University poll of voters in the state conducted Aug. 26-28 found that Trump had a nine-point lead among male voters (51.6 percent to 42.8 percent) and Harris had a nearly five-point lead among female voters (49.5 percent to 45.1 percent).
“The gender gap is real and it really existed under Joe Biden and Donald Trump,” said Morgan Jackson, a North Carolina-based Democratic strategist.
He said some male voters may be uncomfortable supporting a woman for president.
“We saw that in 2016. I think there is a certain segment of the population that votes by gender, and we may see some of that again,” he said.
Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in North Carolina by 3.6 percentage points, or 173,000 votes, in 2016. He defeated Biden in 2020 by 1.3 percentage points, or 74,000 votes.
But Mr Jackson said female voters were leaning towards Ms Harris because Mr Trump's “traditionally misogynistic, sexist views” were “pervasive” and because they saw her candidacy as “historic”.
Harris also said she galvanized Democratic support in a state where black voters are expected to make up about 20% of the electorate.
In Georgia, Trump has a 10-point lead among male voters (53 percent to 43 percent), while Harris has a 10-point lead among female voters (53 percent to 43 percent), according to a CNN/SSRS poll.
Even in California, a Democratic stronghold, a new Hill/Emerson College poll shows that Harris is losing support among male voters but still holds a sizable lead over Trump among liberal-leaning California men.
Harris' support among men has fallen sharply: the 30-point advantage she enjoyed among male California voters has fallen to 20 points.
The Hill/Emerson poll found that Trump holds a 26-point lead among men in Ohio, far surpassing Harris' 3-point lead among women. Trump's lead among Ohio's male voters has grown by 6 points since 2020.
The poll also found that in Florida, Trump holds a 12-point lead among men, while Harris has a 2-point lead among women, after Trump held a 9-point lead among male voters in the state in 2020.
