A few weeks ago, I saw a headline from the newsletter American Storylines that seemed to perfectly capture the vibe of today’s Republican Party: “Divorced Men for Trump.” The author, Daniel Cox, is the director of the Survey Center on American Life, and this particular installment of the newsletter was about the gender and marriage gaps among American voters.
The gist, vis-à-vis relationship status, was that in every category more women than men identify as Democrats, with the biggest gap existing among divorced Americans. According to Gallup, Cox writes, “A majority (54 percent) of divorced men identify as Republican compared to 41 percent of divorced women,” the largest gender gap among divorced people in two decades.
As my colleague Thomas Edsall noted in May, in recent years there’s also a yawning gender gap among young voters, with young women becoming increasingly Democratic and young men becoming increasingly Republican. Edsall quoted the Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who cites Donald Trump’s “chaotic and divisive style” and lack of respect, among the reasons that young women have been fleeing the G.O.P. Young women, Lake said, “want stability and are very concerned about division and the potential for violence.”
All this data was collected when Joe Biden was on course to be the Democratic presidential nominee. With Kamala Harris now the presumptive nominee and JD Vance as Trump’s running mate, the competing campaigns — and by extension our two major political parties — come across as more gendered than ever.
Republicans are sounding like a hostile manosphere podcast, with Vance mostly standing by his “childless cat ladies” rant, and Trump using his speech at the Republican National Convention to call Nancy Pelosi “crazy” and another speech last week to call Harris a “bum.” Special guests like the Trump supporter Elon Musk are along for the ride, too.
Democrats, by contrast, look to be hosting an inclusive and raucous girl party with their messaging and aesthetics; Beyoncé and Charli XCX are the soundtrack to a vision of personal freedom to live your life however you want to.