The traditional gender gap is losing ground as a key factor in politics to intragender gaps that have emerged among Republican and Democratic voters along the fault lines of masculinity and femininity. This recent development involves differences within each gender, as opposed to the gender gap between men and women, which came to the forefront after the 1980 election. Men — specifically white men — who see themselves as extremely masculine tend to support President Trump, while those weaker in their masculinity assessment are far less likely to support him. The gap between the two is just as significant if not more significant than the gender gap.
The Republican Party, long the champion of traditional family values, now draws an even larger share of voters who believe in traditional gender roles. The percentage of Republicans who view “gay or lesbian relations” as “morally acceptable” fell to 35 percent, according to Gallup, from 56 percent in 2022. A 2024 Pew Research Center report found that 53 percent of Republican-leaning men consider themselves highly masculine compared with 29 percent of Democratic-leaning men.
In their 2021 article “Beyond the Gender Gap,” Elisabeth Gidengil and Dietlind Stolle of McGill University found intragender differences between hypermasculine men (81.9 percent favored Trump) and men with a weak masculinity sense (under 30 percent backed Trump) was over 50 points — nearly four times the gender gap.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing