Donald Trump has a huge lead among men, while women tell pollsters they favor Kamala Harris by an equally large margin. The political gender gap reflects a decade of social unrest and could help decide the US election.

For the first woman of color to win a presidential nomination, and only the second woman to ever come so close, Kamala Harris is doing everything she can to avoid talking about her identity.

“Listen, I’m running because I believe I’m the best person right now to do this work for all Americans, regardless of race and gender,” the vice president said in a CNN interview last month.

And yet, despite all her efforts to neutralize the subject, gender is becoming the defining issue of this campaign.

“Madam President” would be something new for America, and it’s fair to assume that while many voters love the idea, some may find the novelty a bit unnerving.

The Harris campaign won’t say it publicly, but an official recently acknowledged to me that they believe there is “covert sexism” that will deter some people from voting for a woman for president.

It’s 2024, and few people want to be the asshole who flat-out tells a pollster that they don’t think a woman is fit for the Oval Office (though plenty are willing to share misogynistic memes on social media). A Democratic strategist suggested there is a code. When voters tell pollsters that Harris isn’t “ready” or doesn’t have the right “personality” or “what it takes,” what they really mean is that the problem is that she’s a woman.

The Trump campaign says gender has nothing to do with it. “Kamala is weak, dishonest and dangerously liberal, and that is why the American people will reject her on November 5,” it said this week. Although Bryan Lanza, a senior adviser to the campaign, texted me to say he is confident Trump will win because “the gender gap gives us an advantage.”

The last time a woman ran for president, negative attitudes toward her gender clearly played a role. Eight years ago, Hillary Clinton hailed her as the first female nominee of a major party. The campaign slogan “I’m with her” was a not-very-subtle reminder of her groundbreaking role.

Pennsylvania Congresswoman Madeleine Dean remembers discussing Clinton’s candidacy with voters. I spent an afternoon with Dean as she campaigned in her district this week and she told me that in 2016 people told her, “There’s just something about her.”

She says she quickly realized that “it was about ‘her.’ That was one thing. It was that (Hillary) was a woman.”

Although Dean thinks this sentiment is less common today, she acknowledges that even now there are “certain people who just think, ‘A powerful woman? No, a bridge too far.’”

A lot has changed for women since 2016. The #MeToo movement in 2017 raised awareness of the subtle – and not so subtle – discrimination women face in the workplace. It changed the way we talk about women as professionals. MeToo may have made it easier for a candidate like Harris to win the nomination.

But those big steps forward in diversity, equality and inclusion were interpreted by some as a step back, especially for young men who felt like they had been left behind. Or the changes were simply a step too far for conservative Americans who prefer more traditional gender roles.

A gender gap has emerged in the race, according to CBS News poll results released Sunday, reflecting broader attitudes in the U.S. about societal roles.

CBS, the BBC’s US news partner, reported that men are more likely to say that efforts to promote gender equality in the US have gone too far; it is more likely that they are Trump supporters.

Women are more likely to say these efforts haven’t been enough — and they tend to support Harris.

Men are also less likely than women to think Harris will be a strong leader, CBS reported, and a majority of men say they think Trump will be a strong leader.

For some voters, the November elections have thus become a referendum on gender norms and the social unrest of recent years. This seems especially true for the voters Kamala Harris has difficulty reaching: the young men living in a rapidly changing world for, well, young men.

“Young men often feel that when they ask questions, they will be labeled as misogynistic, homophobic or racist,” said John Della Volpe, polling director at the Harvard Institute of Politics.

“Frustrated because they don’t feel understood, many are then sucked into a bro culture of Donald Trump or Elon Musk. They look at who Democrats prioritize – women, abortion rights, LGTBQ culture – and they ask ‘what about us?’”

Della Volpe specializes in surveying younger voters. He says the young men he’s referring to are not part of a radical alt-right incel cabal. They are your sons, or your neighbor’s sons. Many support equality for women, he says, but they also feel like their own concerns are not being heard.

Della Volpe scans a list of statistics that show how young men today are worse off than their female counterparts: they are less likely to be in relationships, they are less likely to go to college than before, they have higher suicide rates than before, they have more suicides than before. their female peers.

Meanwhile, young American women are moving forward. They are better educated than men, they work in the service sector that is growing and they increasingly earn more than men. According to the polling group Gallup, young women have also become significantly more liberal than young men in the period since Donald Trump was elected president.

All this creates a strong gender split. According to the American Enterprise Institute, the share of young men who say the U.S. has gone “too far” in advancing gender equality has more than doubled in the past seven years.

With his almost intuitive insight into people’s dissatisfaction, Trump has tapped into that male frustration, and in the final weeks of his campaign he has doubled down on masculinity. He posted another warning on Truth Social, claiming that “masculinity is under attack.” He recently made fun of a famous golfer’s genitals.

“This is a man who was all man,” Trump said, referring to golfer Arnold Palmer. “When he went to take a shower with the other pros, they came out of there – they were like, ‘Oh my God. That’s incredible. ”

Trump brought the locker room talk out of the locker room — and his audience loved it. Discussing penis size at a political meeting was the ultimate resistance to the stifling political correctness.

At their rallies and on the air, Democrats’ response to disgruntled men seems to be a dose of tough love. Barack Obama railed that some men “don’t like the idea of ​​having a woman as president and you come up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.” In a new TV ad, actor Ed O’Neill was a bit smoother, but more direct: “Be a man: vote for a woman.”

In the final days of this campaign, gender is everywhere – and nowhere.

Donald Trump wants masculinity to take center stage in this race. Kamala Harris barely admits that she is a woman running for office. According to a New York Times poll, Trump leads with 14% among male voters. Harris leads women with 12%.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: they could decide these elections.