Is it the ultimate battle of the sexes? In the 2018 midterms, men supported the Republicans by the percentage margin 51-47.
Women broke for the Democrats 59-40 — overwhelming support that gave the party control of Congress.
Hardly a one-off, this phenomenon manifests itself every election and even has a name: the “gender gap” (“sex gap” would be the proper terminology). Moreover, far from showing signs of diminishing, a new survey of college students finds that the voting sex gap (VSG) may be reaching unprecedented proportions.
The research in question, the College Pulse’s Future of Politics (CPFP) survey, also found that students are the most politicized they’ve been since the late 1960s; this is perhaps not surprising given that three-quarters of the respondents say our country is on the wrong track and are inspired to take corrective action.
The CPFP held interviews at summer recess’ conclusion with more than 1,500 undergraduate students at 91 institutions of higher learning and found, for starters, that a whopping 84 percent are registered to vote; this figure was only 69 percent in 2016 and 80 percent in 2020. (Since only informed citizens should vote and because most aren’t well informed, greater voter participation is rarely if ever good for a republic, contrary to popular myth. This is not to say that citizens should not vote, but that they should become informed before voting.)
Interestingly and unlike in the wider society, more college men than women are registered. The male/female gap here, based on self-reporting, was 88-82 overall and 92-86 at (pseudo)elite schools.
As for the VSG, professors Samuel J. Abrams and Jeremi Suri report at Newsweek:
Students are divided in their voting preferences, the survey found, but the most consistent division was a surprising one: between women and men. 30 percent of college women identify as Democrats today and only 20 percent identify as Republicans. In elite universities, the difference is greater: 45 percent of women in top-25 ranked colleges identify as Democrats, compared to only 7 percent as Republicans.
What’s surprising is that men in universities have moved in the opposite direction: 39 percent of college men identify as Republicans, almost double the 21 percent who identify as Democrats. And these percentages hold up in elite universities: 40 percent of men in top-25 ranked colleges identify as Republicans, while only 25 percent as Democrats.
It appears that men at universities are moving to the Right as women shift to the Left, in what appears to be the beginning of a backlash.
These differences between women and men seem quite firm: 58 percent of college women report they cannot imagine registering as a Republican in the next ten years, while 52 percent of college men cannot imagine registering as a Democrat in the same period. In contrast, two-thirds or 66 percent of women foresee the possibility of becoming a Democrat, while nearly two-thirds or 64 percent of men contemplate becoming Republicans.
In reality, the VSG shouldn’t be “surprising,” as the academics say; again, it’s the historical norm. As examples, men went for Trump in 2016 by 12 points, women for Hillary Clinton by 12; men chose Mitt Romney by eight in 2012; women, Obama by a dozen. Even in the 2010 red wave midterm election that vaulted the GOP to legislative power, women supported Democrats 49-48.
Yet the VSG does seem to be expanding and may bring us to a point where men vote from Mars, women from Venus. As to the causes, Abrams and Suri present facile explanations, mentioning how men “perceive” there to be “‘attacks’ on their status from women” (yeah, guys, it’s all in your heads!) while women are reacting to “typical” raunchy male behavior. The reality, though, is more complex.
First, women have always been more liberal than men. As one female writer put it years ago, “Women are natural-born socialists.” This makes sense considering that the domestic realm, women’s historical focus, is akin to a socialist model: The parents govern without the consent of the governed, the children, who have no vote; the parental “state” provides for the “people” (kids), so it really is “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”; and especially when little, the children’s lives must be micromanaged by a nanny state (mom!).
This is fine because it’s what family is all about. The problem arises when this mentality is applied to the wider society.
Second, it’s not just that young men may sense that some women are attacking them — it’s the fact that the Left and its home, the Democratic Party, surely are.
Boys now grow up hearing about how they are responsible for an “oppressive patriarchy” and benefit from “male privilege” (and white male privilege in particular), and even are told that the quality defining them, masculinity, is “toxic.” Why, representative of this hatred was how an administrator at NYC’s posh Trinity School was recently caught on video calling its white boys “horrible” because of their opinions, and joking about how they should be murdered. What’s more, the school didn’t really seem to take sincere issue with her comments.
So is it any surprise that among young voters, white men were the only demographic supporting President Trump in the 2020 election? Is it shocking that they’re rejecting the Democratic Party? You may as well ask why the kulaks despised Stalin in 1930.
(Note: It would be interesting to see the CPFP survey results broken down by race.)
Other factors explaining the CPFP’s data are that studies show that, on the whole, women know less about politics and current affairs than men do and that this correlates with ideology, as liberals know less than conservatives do; that women are the “security sex,” more likely than men to be swayed by big government appeals to security; and that women are more likely to make emotion-based decisions, and “liberalism” is an emotion-based (pseudo)ideology.
What’s for sure is that, unless something changes, forget Mars and Venus. Men and women may end up operating in different universes — until a civilizational collapse brings them together.
