Supporters cheer as Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris waves during a campaign event, on Sept. 12, in Greensboro, N.C.Matt Kelley/The Associated Press
In NBC’s latest poll, American women voters favour the Democrats by a roaring 58 to 37 per cent. Men back the Republicans by 52 to 40.
That’s not a gap. It’s a chasm.
Women, propelled by social issues, have always tended to be more moderate politically than men. But now divisions have sharpened to the point where politics has become a battle between the sexes. Right versus left used to be predominantly about issues. Now it is as much about gender: progressive women versus hidebound MAGA males.
With the former rests hope. If the world is saved from four more years of Donald Trump it will be chiefly due to opposition from women. This week he backed down, like a coward, from another debate with Kamala Harris.
If Ms. Harris eliminates his threat and wins the presidency, becoming the world’s most powerful person, it will constitute a mountaintop moment in women’s history. It will see a surge in woman power. It will be a dagger to the throat of hard-right populism and its demagogic satrap.
The gender division is by no means unique to the United States. Women are distancing themselves from the hard right everywhere. In Canada, an Ekos poll released this week showed that, rather remarkably, the governing Liberals would be in a tie with Conservatives at 31 per cent if just women were to vote; that same poll showed Conservatives winning in a landslide on the total vote. Other pollsters have also registered a significant male-female voting difference in Canada, though not of such a significant magnitude.
Globally, a survey released in April of 300,000 people in 20 countries by the marketing firm Glocalities showed a big divide, particularly among youth. Young women have significantly strengthened liberal and antipatriarchal values over the last decade, the survey said. That contrasts with young men, who have become less liberal.
In the U.S., there are glaring reasons fuelling the gender chasm. There’s a woman candidate, in one corner; in the other, there is a man in Mr. Trump who has been found liable for sexual abuse in one case and guilty of 34 felony counts in another – a hush money case involving his relations with a pornographic-film actress.
There’s the political earthquake that came after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion – a decision applauded by Mr. Trump.
There’s a vice-presidential candidate in J.D. Vance who has gone on record as belittling prominent Democratic women as “childless cat ladies,” which caused a furor among women.
In addition, there is the disgusting sight of Trump-endorsed Republican Mark Robinson, who is running for governor of North Carolina. He allegedly called himself a Black Nazi on a porn site, said he preferred Adolf Hitler to Barack Obama and attacked women, declaring that abortions amount to “killing a child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”
In the broader context, pollsters cite a number of other reasons for the growing gender divide. Conservative parties in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere used to be more moderate, but they’ve moved off those moorings to a more raw-boned ideology that has alienated women voters. Meanwhile, men have more recently become drawn to authoritarian-styled leaders and their hard-right populism.
Women, notes Ekos pollster Frank Graves, also don’t appear as susceptible to disinformation as white American males. “They’re not so easily conned,” he told me. Women view the environment and the climate crisis more seriously than conservative men. Health care is a larger priority for them. They are more avid backers of gun control.
Women are less paranoid about immigrants. They see Mr. Trump keep veering back, like a dog returning to its vomit, to his racist obsession with newcomers.
Women want more civility in politics than is being offered by leaders such as Mr. Trump and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre who, as pollster Nik Nanos noted, initially scored badly with women for treating politics like a blood sport.
Mr. Poilievre was once polling well behind Justin Trudeau among women voters, but with the help of the Prime Minister’s plunging political fortunes over the last year, that is no longer the case. The Tories don’t have the political baggage with women that the Republican Party does, and Mr. Poilievre’s lead is so large with men that he doesn’t need to score highly with female voters.
But Donald Trump does. In the U.S., thank heavens for the gender gulf. Without the rise of enlightened women, there would be no hope of stopping him and his MAGA males from marching the country backward.