MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The gender gap took center stage in this campaign even more than usual. Vice President Kamala Harris emphasized women's reproductive freedom, and President-elect Donald Trump focused on getting men to vote. For more on how the gender gap played out, we are joined now by Elaine Kamarck. She is at the Brookings Institution - that's a Washington, D.C., think tank - where she's written about the gender gap. We're also joined by Jackson Katz. He's the creator of the 2024 documentary "The Man Card Documentary: 50 Years Of Gender, Power & The American Presidency." He's also written a book on the subject. Good morning to you both. Thank you both so much for joining us.
ELAINE KAMARCK: Thanks for having us.
JACKSON KATZ: Good morning, Michel. Thank you.
MARTIN: OK, so both candidates campaigned with the hope that the gender gap would work to their advantage. So, Elaine, I'll start with you. Is there any way in which it did?
KAMARCK: No, it didn't, obviously. And I think that one of the things that happened over the course of the campaign was in September, Kamala was doing fairly well. And we - a lot of us anticipated that if women's turnout was high and if the gender gap was in favor of Harris, then she would do pretty well. Something happened on October 1, which is Donald Trump came out and said, frankly, he'll veto a federal abortion ban. And that was the clearest statement he'd made on that, even though he's changed his mind about it a lot of times. That in combination with 10 abortion referenda - only two of which failed, OK? - meant that women were relaxing a little bit about that because, in fact, what was happening is very, very red states like Missouri and Nebraska were passing, you know, freedom to abortion referenda. And I think women sort of said, OK, well, maybe that's taken care of, and we can vote our pocketbook or whatever. So, in any event, the numbers were not nearly as good for Harris, as, ironically, they were for Joe Biden four years ago.
MARTIN: Interesting. Jackson, you know, President-elect Trump made his campaign appeal to men in new ways. He appeared on, you know, podcasts with majority male listenership, like the ones hosted by Joe Rogan or Logan Paul, for example. What's your takeaway about his success in turning out men, and do you think that was a factor?
KATZ: Oh, I think it was a critical factor. I think from the moment Donald Trump emerged as a political candidate in 2015, back almost 10 years ago, he presented himself as the man's candidate and MAGA as the men's movement. And they just doubled down on that in this election cycle from the Republican National Convention, which was a complete, hypermasculine spectacle, to the appearance on multiple podcasts that have young men, in particular, as their major audience like Joe Rogan, the NELK brothers and a whole bunch of others. And the message being sent to young men was I see you, I care about you, and the other side thinks you are all toxic. And I think that some of our hope was that the Kamala Harris campaign and by the pick of Tim Walz was going to be responsive to that narrative and be more aggressive, if you will, in their outreach to young men. And obviously, it fell short.
MARTIN: Our colleague Danielle Kurtzleben has a question.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Hi, yeah, I'm wondering if - to your point about the podcasts, I'm wondering if you have any way of dissecting how much of the gender gap is about substance, especially economics, opportunity for blue-collar men, and how much of it is about Trump's persona and that male outreach that his campaigned did.
MARTIN: Let's hear from both of you on this. Jackson, you first.
KATZ: I think it's a great question. I think it's both. I think this is identity politics more than it is about substantive political issues, because if you could look - if you look at the data, the data is very clear that the Biden economy, if you will, including with investments in blue-collar industries and all kinds of - that will create and have been creating thousands of blue-collar jobs are actually real, but the narrative in the podcast universe and the social media universe for low-information, low-engagement male voters, especially young male voters, is that the Biden-Harris economy and the Biden-Harris campaign and the Biden-Harris presidency was very bad for blue-collar men and for men in general. And they didn't counteract that aggressively enough.
MARTIN: Elaine, what do you think about that? I'm also really struck by the fact that something we heard from one of our guests earlier, Christine Matthews, who's a pollster - she pointed out that this notion that, you know, women would flock to Harris turned out not to be true and that white women basically returned to form. They tended to vote as they have in the past with the Republican candidate. So, Elaine, what do you think about that?
KAMARCK: Yeah, I think that first of all, he's right, that, in fact, you can't separate out the issues from the sort of persona of Donald Trump. But I also think that white women relaxed a little bit when they saw that in state after state after state, abortion was actually being reinstated quite well by lots and lots of people. And so they disconnected their thoughts on abortion from their preference for candidates, particularly once Trump kind of, you know, clarified that he wasn't going to do anything about it, and all he said over and over is it's a state decision. And so once that happened, I think you're right, women reverted - white women, particularly, suburbs and working-class white women - reverted to where they had been, which is Republican and Republican-leaning. And so the issue that we saw in 2022 played out so well for so many Democrats simply didn't play out this time because, in fact, the politics around it had progressed.
MARTIN: I'm curious about what happens with younger voters, I mean, young voters aged, like, 18 to 29. Leading up to this election, Elaine, you wrote about that, you know, younger voters, younger women, in particular, were leaning more Democratic. But you saw visually that there were a lot of young men attracted to Trump. You saw a lot of younger men at some of these rallies, and certainly some of these media outlets that he was appealing to were very much sort of focused on young men. And I just sort of wonder if - among younger voters how this looks going forward. So, Elaine, you want to start?
KAMARCK: Yeah. Yeah, there certainly is a gender gap among younger voters. Yet, on the whole, younger voters, 18 to 24, were 56% for Harris; 25 to 29 - 55; you know, 40 to 49 - 50. In fact, if you break this down the way some of my colleagues at Brookings have in their writing is there's an over-under-45 age gap.
MARTIN: Interesting.
KAMARCK: So even though there's still a gender gap among younger voters, they are in point of fact a more Democratic cohort than older voters.
MARTIN: Gosh, I hate to leave us with the gender gap, but I don't know if I have time to hear from Jackson on this. Jackson, we'll have to call you back.
KATZ: (Laughter) All right. Thanks, Michel.
MARTIN: That is Jackson Katz and Elaine Kamarck. Thank you both so much for joining us.
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