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President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance relied on gains within many demographic groups from 2020 to 2024, including among women and men. But a clear gender difference in candidate preferences persisted in 2024 that was similar to what we have seen in 2016 and 2020, according to an initial analysis of exit poll and election survey data by the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.
Women were more likely than men to support Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz within and across every race/ethnic, age, and education group reported in the available data. But women voters – like men – are not monolithic, as evident in the fact that Black women, Latinas, college-educated white women, and young women supported Harris at the highest levels, while non-college-educated white women and white evangelical women continued to provide a loyal base of support for Trump.
In 2024, as in 2020, major media outlets relied on more than one election survey to analyze voter behavior in the presidential election: Edison Research’s national exit poll and AP VoteCast (conducted by AP-NORC). Findings from BSP Research (formerly Latino Decisions) are also included in CAWP analyses to incorporate more sophisticated and robust sampling of racial minority voters and a methodology that includes greater respondent access to multilingual surveys than the Edison exit poll. In light of differences between these surveys and their sampling limitations, CAWP’s analyses of gender and voting behavior in 2024 focuses on trends consistent across these surveys.
Gender Gap in Vote Choice
The gender gap in vote choice refers to a difference between the percentage of women and the percentage of men voting for a given candidate, generally the winning candidate. Even when women and men favor the same candidate, they may do so by different margins, resulting in a gender gap. In every presidential election since 1980, a gender gap ranging from four to 12 points has been apparent, with a greater proportion of women than men preferring the Democrat in each case. The beneficiary of this gender gap in vote choice is dependent on the party of the candidate, not candidate gender. In 2024, this trend continues.
Edison’s exit poll currently reports a gender gap of ten percentage points between all women and all men, with 45% of women and 55% of men voting for Trump. VoteCast offers a smaller gender gap (nine percentage points, with 46% of women and 55% of men voting for Trump), but the gap itself persists.
Gender Differences within Race/Ethnicity Subgroups
Across multiple election surveys, including the Edison exit poll and the VoteCast survey, Black women proved to be the most reliable base of voters for the Harris/Walz ticket, with about 9 in 10 Black women casting ballots for the Democrats. Consistent with previous presidential elections, Black women’s support for the Democratic ticket was greater than the support of any other group of women voters. Their support for Harris was also greater than Black men, though the large majority of Black men also voted for the Democratic ticket.
A clear majority of Latinas cast their ballots for the Harris/Walz ticket, according to this year’s election surveys. Data varies across available polls, with Latina support around 60% in Edison and VoteCast, while BSP Research shows that two-thirds of Latinas backed Harris. Data on Latina/o/x voting also vary when it comes to assessing the vote choice of Latino men, but each demonstrate these same trends: (1) Latinas’ support for the Democratic presidential candidate was greater than the support of Latino men; and (2) the Democratic ticket lost Latina/o/x support while the Republican ticket gained Latina/o/x support from 2020 to 2024.
A majority of white women continued to support Trump in all 2024 election surveys. Both Edison and VoteCast data show 53% of white women backing Trump, compared to 60% of white men (a seven point gender gap). Across both surveys, white women’s support for Trump has ranged from 52 to 55% from 2016 to 2024. Similar majorities of white women have backed the Republican presidential nominee in every election since 2004.
Differences by Education and Religion
Due to differences in available data, greater disaggregation is possible among white voters than voters in other racial/ethnic groups. This data reveals a growing education gap among white women voters, as well as persistent differences by religion.
In 2024, college-educated white women further cemented their shift to Democratic support since the 2016 presidential election. This group backed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by seven points, according to Edison’s 2016 exit poll. In 2020, Biden expanded that margin of support among college-educated white women to nine points. This year, Harris’ margin of victory among college-educated white women was 16 points.
In contrast, Trump’s success in winning the majority of all white women’s votes again in 2024 can be credited largely to his support among clear majorities of non-college-educated white women across election surveys. Trump’s margin of victory among this subgroup was between 25 and 28 points in both the Edison and VoteCast data, with more than 6 in 10 non-college-educated white women backing Trump. This level of support is nearly identical to Trump’s support among these voters in 2020. While non-college-educated white men remained more likely than their women counterparts to back the Trump/Vance ticket, both groups were key to Trump’s support this year.
According to the Edison exit poll, white born-again or evangelical women voters also continued to prove essential to Trump’s support in 2024, with eight in ten of them casting their ballots for the Trump/Vance ticket, up from 71% in 2020. Evangelical men supported the Republican ticket in even higher numbers, though the gender gap appeared to narrow from 2020 to 2024. In contrast, majorities of white men and women with no religious affiliation supported the Harris/Walz ticket, with nearly 80% of white women with no religious affiliation backing the Democrats. Notably, Edison’s exit poll reports that while large majorities of both white Jewish women (90%) and men (72%) backed Harris, white Jewish women were 18 points more likely to back the Democratic ticket than white Jewish men.
Gender Differences by Age
Young women (aged 18-29) have consistently backed Democratic presidential nominees more than women in other age cohorts and more than young men. This was true again in 2024, when 61% of young women backed the Harris/Walz ticket, compared to 47% of young men. While nearly half of young men (and the plurality of that group) in the Edison exit poll backed Trump, only 37% of young women supported the Republican ticket.
Notably, however, the percentages of both young women and young men supporting the Democratic ticket dropped from 2020 to 2024, while the percentages of young women and men supporting the Republican ticket increased. This stands in contrast to pre-election analysis citing the potential for a widened gap between women and men members of Gen Z. Instead, the gender gap among this age group was 12 points in 2024, slightly smaller than the 15-point gender gap in 2020.
According to the Edison exit poll, the only age cohort of women that increased their support for the Democratic ticket and decreased their support for the Republican ticket from 2020 to 2022 is women aged 65+. And the only age cohort of women that voted for Trump over Harris was women aged 45-64. Gender gaps of at least ten points, with men more likely to support the Trump/Vance ticket, are evident in each age cohort.
As the data above demonstrate, however, there are multiple gender gaps that should be analyzed to fully understand the differential role of women and men voters in presidential election outcomes. Women across many demographic subgroups – including those highlighted here – were less likely than their male counterparts to support the Trump/Vance ticket. However, it is important to note that women are not a monolithic voting bloc. While Democrats maintain an advantage with women voters overall, that advantage is built upon differing levels of support among subgroups of women. Moreover, these data illustrate that understanding women's voting behavior necessitates analyses both across and within subgroups.
For more detailed analyses of gender differences in voting behavior in previous elections, see CAWP’s data on gender differences in vote choice and voter turnout.