The gender gap grows wider and wider

The gender gap, we're informed by some of the best polling analysts in the business, is bigger than ever. Ever, in this case, means since the election of 1980, when men were more willing than women to vote for Ronald Reagan and oust Jimmy Carter. That spurred political journalists to emit multiple articles examining just exactly what was on women's minds and probing their different and presumably superior opinions. The assumption was that the gender gap was costing Republicans votes. Being of a contrary disposition, in October 1982, I wrote an opinion article titled (paraphrasing Sigmund Freud), "What Do Men Want?" For most of four decades, the gender gap wobbled around three or four points. Now, coinciding — perhaps not accidentally — with the era of President Donald Trump, it is bigger. In 2024, according to analyst Daniel Cox, the gender gap was 11 points among Black voters, 12 points among white voters, and 13 points among Hispanics. And it seems to be getting wider among the young. Democratic pollster David Shor sees a gender gap of around 5% among over-70s and around 10% among those 35 to 70, dwarfed by a gap skyrocketing among the young, up above 20%. Polling analyst Nate Silver, probing the sharp differences in partisan preference among young men and young women — men are far more Republican, women far more Democratic — built on longstanding findings that women tend to be more risk-averse than men. "Young men take a more risk-on view of the economy," he wrote, while Democrats "emphasize security — minimizing downside risk — above the opportunity to compete and maximizing upside outcomes." On a related issue, Silver notes the longstanding research on happiness that shows young men are significantly more likely than young women to self-describe as happy, and other research showing that self-described conservatives report themselves much happier than self-described liberals. On happiness studies, as Silver notes, "Age and religiosity matter a lot — religious people are happier, young people are sadder — but the liberal/conservative gap outweighs almost all other characteristics except age." "I was honestly surprised by how strong the relationship is," Silver writes in a passage many of his political analyst readers found stunning. "Among voters who report poor mental health, liberals outnumber conservatives 45 to 19 percent. Among those who report excellent mental health, conservatives outnumber liberals 51-20." He concludes that young men being "lower on agreeableness and neuroticism" than women translates into greater support for Trump and for what has become a Trump Republican Party. More partisan analysts attribute the growing gender gap among the young to young women's greater neuroticism. Reflecting on results of a survey on whether doctors have ever told respondents they have a mental health problem, Republican staffer Andrew Follett, in a partisan and perhaps hysterical tone, tweets, "Literally half of young left wing woman...the cat ladies who are the basis for their party...are mentally ill. Young left wing MEN are more mentally ill than conservative WOMEN." Lest you think this comment is hyperbolic, consider a recent description of America today by Taylor Lorenz, a social media writer who is far enough from the fringe to have been hired and given bylines by both The New York Times and The Washington Post. In one characteristic tweet in 2023, Lorenz, who constantly wears a mask in public, presented an ultra-pessimistic view of America and the world. "We're living in a late stage capitalist hellscape during an ongoing deadly pandemic w record wealth inequality, 0 social safety net/job security, as climate change cooks the world." A more measured view comes from the Republican pollster and author Patrick Ruffini. "Unhappiness is a feature of being on the left these days. A greater belief in societal ills is internalized, reinforced by being online 24/7. They talk often about right-wingers or Trump policies literally killing people." The partisan gender gap is perhaps the least dangerous result of this frenzied and breathtakingly ahistoric mindset. Talk show host Erick Erickson points to the Axios report that a House Democrat says constituents say "what we really need to do is be willing to be shot." Dangerous speculations in a time of two assassination attempts on the president and armed assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Texas. Then there is the evidence of less contact between young men and women, with romances discouraged on campuses and at workplaces, fewer marriages, increasing childlessness and below-replacement birth rates, which threaten the fundamentals of society. But that's a bigger subject, for another day. The partisan gender gap, begun some 40 years ago as feminists decried toxic masculinity, has been widening in recent years as bros recoil at toxic femininity. In time, perhaps it will narrow, with a greater appreciation of nontoxic humanity. Michael Barone is a syndicated columnist.