Last month, 27-year-old Tyler Nieves matched with a young woman on Bumble. Their conversation flowed easily as they bonded over their favorite cities in Italy, where they had both studied abroad in college. But after a couple days of exchanging messages, she asked him who he had voted for in the election. When he said it was Donald Trump, the messages stopped. Quietly, she unmatched him.
“That’s not the first time something like that has happened,” Nieves said. “And it’s not just me – it’s happened to a lot of my friends, too.”
In the wake of the election, the growing strain between young men and women has become hard to ignore. And it’s not confined to romantic relationships; it’s also spilling over into friendships, workplace dynamics and everyday social interactions. Lucy Wong, a 24-year-old chemical engineer, said she has distanced herself from two of her male friends this month because they voted for Trump. “I’m not completely cutting them off, but the weight of it really hit me after he won the election and I just feel like I need some space from them,” she said.
This divide is not quite a shocker; as a demographic, young men typically lean right, while young women typically lean left. Ballot trend analysts predicted that this election season’s unique circumstances – a male candidate held liable for sexual assault, pitted against a female candidate championing women’s reproductive rights – would result in a gender gap more substantial than we’ve seen in previous elections.
What is a surprise, though, is that the predicted gender gap didn’t quite happen. How men and women voted this fall actually fell in line with trends we’ve seen in past cycles. According to the Edison exit poll, the gender gap in support of Donald Trump in 2024 was 10 points, with 55 percent of men and 45 percent of women supporting Trump. This is not a far cry from the 11-point gap we saw in support of Biden in 2020 and even a bit less than the 12-point gap we saw in support of Trump in 2016. Theoretically, there should not be any more political tension between men and women than in years past.
And yet, there is.
Lots of young people are taking to TikTok to share stories about breaking up with their partners who voted differently than they did. (“Dump Your Republican Boyfriend” stickers were trending on Etsy for a while.) Some women are participating in the 4B movement and swearing off men completely.
@thisonesforthebees May seem harsh, but i do wanna say this was kind of a given. I’m sorry you were betrayed by the wolf you let into your home, wolves do bite though and i thought that much was obvious. #💙
♬ original sound – Ashley
“Women have every right to express their rage,” Wong said. “I personally had to unfollow a few guys from high school who were sharing far-right content constantly. It’s just not something I want to see on my feed.”
Nieves said he is not actively avoiding liberal women, but he has found it difficult to have open conversations with them. “I voted for Trump because I think he’ll crack down on borders and make our country safer,” he said. “But I can never even say that because it’s immediately ‘You’re a bigot. You hate women.’”
According to Raquel Debono, chief marketing officer of conservatives-only dating app Date Right, this is true for lots of conservative men: “They have this picture of a blue-haired woman” – a far-right stereotype of a radical feminist – “in their head that’s screaming at them. And I think men are simple creatures. I really think men just don’t want to fight.”
For young men and women, political stances are more important than ever in deciding who they surround themselves with. “That’s part of what has made this era of political polarization so unique,” said Jonathan Collins, an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University. “Political identity is infiltrated into the way we think about ourselves, socially, even romantically. There’s very little room for interaction or engagement across party lines.”
Irreconcilable Differences
While presidential campaigns have long leveraged gendered messaging, this year, it took on a much more serious tone.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton infused her campaign with a “girlboss” ethos, embracing slogans like “The Future is Female” and transforming Trump’s pejorative “nasty woman” into a rallying cry for women everywhere. Six years later, Roe v. Wade was overturned – replacing all the cheerleading with a fear that was, at the time, unprecedented for young women. In 2016, pregnant women in need of abortions weren’t told to wait in the hospital parking lot until they bleed out.
Gwynn Thomas, chair of the global gender and sexuality studies department at the University of Buffalo, points to the Dobbs decision as an election gamechanger. “Losing Roe is about losing women’s ability to control their own lives,” she said. “It is fundamentally about women’s rights as citizens and their dignity as equal citizens in the United States.”
Men have never feared for their bodily autonomy (just ask Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in this much-shared line of questioning by then-Senator Kamala Harris). Yet, an increasing number of young men are reporting feelings of loneliness and lack of purpose amid today’s evolving social and economic climate. Equimundo’s 2023 “State of American Men” report revealed that only 22 percent of men have three or more people in their local area they feel close to or depend on. On top of that, nearly half of men say their online lives are more engaging and rewarding than their offline lives.
In the post-Trump years especially, some young men have found solace in the “manosphere” – a sprawling online network that champions figures like Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, who frequently promote the narrative that feminism is a tool for undermining male strength and dominance. In one video, Joe Rogan said men who are feminists “don’t run fast, they can’t pick things up, they’re not attractive…they’re little weasels.”
Thomas said these narratives give men the idea that feminism and women are the root causes of all their problems – “That’s an easy story to tell young men.”
So while young women on the left are afraid of losing their rights, young men on the right are afraid of losing their power. Both blame each other for trying to take these things away, which has fueled mutual resentment and heightened turnout at the polls (though slightly lower than the turnout in 2020).
Although the gender gap remains unchanged in size, both sides saw fresh faces join their ranks this year, invigorated by a sense of urgency and the belief that there’s even more at stake than before.
A Digital Divide
The internet doesn’t help, either.
“It was a media election,” said Debono. “It was a podcasters election. It was an influencers election.”
The podcast appearances by each candidate revealed starkly gendered audience preferences: Trump appeared on male-dominated platforms like The Joe Rogan Experience and Theo Von’s This Past Weekend, while Harris connected with a predominantly female audience through Call Her Daddy.
Furthermore, an investigation by The Washington Post revealed striking disparities in the political news tailored to men and women on TikTok.
“It’s the algorithms on social media, the ways in which the media system is fractured, and the ways in which people don’t read traditional media anymore,” said Thomas. “It’s much easier to create these bubbles, and someone has to work really hard to actually get out of them.”
What happens when we do get out? Will we better understand, and even empathize with, those who have different political beliefs?
“I don’t think all Republican men are fundamentally evil,” said Wong, the young engineer who’s distanced herself from some male friends. “But this is about morals. I think there will be room for conversation, just maybe not right now.”
Nieves said he might take a break from dating, but hopes for an opportunity to chat with a liberal woman and see if they can bond over what they have in common. “If they don’t unmatch me first.”
There will always be people unwilling to budge. There are men who will always blame women’s advancement for their own feelings of being left behind. There are women who will never feel comfortable around men who voted red. With several of Trump’s Cabinet picks being accused of sexual misconduct, the emotions are still raw. Collins predicted workplace dynamics will become complicated as men and women figure out “how to work collaboratively in the workspace in ways that don’t turn into the exercise of any sort of gender-based power dynamics.”
It is likely that Republican men who have not done anything wrong will have to pay for the actions of those who have – which is probably where a lot of their frustration is coming from, observers say. But as Thomas pointed out, “It is not young women’s responsibility to make young men feel better.”
One silver lining to remember is that conflict opens up opportunities for productivity. But for now, we wait in a sort of purgatory to see if and when these issues will iron themselves out. According to Collins, “it may lead to some awkwardness and some political alienation.” Whether anyone – on either side of the political spectrum – will do the necessary work is debatable. “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” he hesitated. “We’ll see.” ◼️
