Democrats: try being less feminine

Why men vote Republican

Written by Noah Carl.

A notable feature of recent presidential elections is the sizeable gender gap in voting. Women were 13 points more likely to vote for Clinton than men were. They were 12 points more likely to vote for Biden. And they were 11 points more likely to vote for Harris. Interestingly, the gender gap in support for Democrats is even larger among non-white voters. This year, it was only 8 points among whites, but was 14 points among blacks and 17 points among Hispanics. Why are men so much less likely to support Democrats?

Although it appears to have widened since 2012, the gender gap in voting is nothing new. What many people don’t realise, however, is that it didn’t always exist. In fact, women used to be less likely to support Democrats than men. According to Gallup data, this was true in the 1976, 1956 and 1952 elections. (Other elections in that time period recorded little or no gender gap.) Hence the gender gap with which we’re all familiar has only really existed since 1980.¹

Various explanations for this divergence have been put forward, but to me the answer seems quite simple: Democrats came to be seen as the “feminine party” and Republicans came to be seen as the “masculine party”.

There’s no inherent reason why left-wing political parties should be seen as feminine. Election posters for socialist and communist parties from the first half of the 20th century often portrayed distinctly masculine themes, such as armed resistance fighters or men performing industrial work. Below is an election poster for Eugene Debs, Socialist Party of America candidate in 1904. Contrast it with today’s “Democratic Socialists of America”, who raise “points of personal privilege” about the need to avoid using “gendered language”.

Source.

The traditional electoral base of many left-wing parties, including to a large extent the Democrats, was working people: coal miners, brick-layers, train drivers, stevedores and factory workers, along with their counterparts in female-dominated professions. Yet this has long ceased to be the case. Today, the Democrats rely on a disjointed coalition of ethnic minorities, highly educated professionals and unmarried women. White men without a college degree voted 69% for Donald Trump.

It’s hardly surprising that working-class white men have been abandoning the Democrats in droves. If you go to the Democratic Party’s official website and click through to “Who We Serve”, you will find a section for every major demographic group except men. (There is a section for “Ethnic Americans”, whoever they are.) As we all know, liberal commentators are fond of railing against such bogeymen as “the patriarchy”, “toxic masculinity” and “straight white males”. And in surveys, Democrats are much more likely to say that women face discrimination – despite the fact it’s men who are falling behind on key metrics.

However, the perception of Democrats as feminine goes well beyond tone-deaf pronouncements about “toxic masculinity” and a lack of concern about problems facing men. The very language they use is unmistakably feminine. Slogans like “Love Wins”, “Love Trumps Hate”, “Hate Has No Home Here”, “Believe All Women”, “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” and “No Human is Illegal” sound incredibly mawkish and off-putting to me (regardless of the merits of the underlying issue). I don’t think I could ever vote for a party that used the slogan “Love Wins”. So even if Democrats ditched the academic-feminist baggage and acknowledged that many gender gaps actually favour women, they would still be unappealing to a lot of men.²

A case in point is a remark Harris made during her TV debate with Trump. Toward the end of her closing statement (which she had presumably prepared beforehand) she proclaimed: “I'll tell you, as a prosecutor I never asked a victim or a witness are you a Republican or a Democrat. The only thing I ever asked them: are you okay? And that's the kind of president we need right now. Someone who cares about you”. Men don’t want a president who asks them whether they’re okay. They want a president who commands respect, a president who could rally an army.³ And you don’t have to be the sort of person who cheers at Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt off to see this.

In addition to popular slogans and snippets from speeches, there’s a great deal of empirical evidence that Democrats are seen as feminine.

In a highly cited 2010 study, the political scientist Nicholas Winter analysed data from multiple waves of the American National Election Study. In each wave, respondents were asked to mention up to five things they like about each party, as well as up to five things they dislike. Winter then classified their answers into three categories: masculine, feminine and neutral. Masculine answers were those that referred to traits or characteristics that are associated with masculinity (e.g., “strong”, “independent”). Feminine answers were those that referred to traits or characteristics that are associated with femininity (e.g., “caring”, “compassionate”.) Winter’s main finding is shown below.

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In almost every election since 1972, Americans have been more likely to associate the Republicans with masculinity, especially when it comes to things they like about the party. And in every election since 1980, they have been more likely to associate the Democrats with femininity. Winter’s data only went up to 2004, but a recent analysis replicated his finding for the period 2008–2020.

Likewise, Damon Roberts and Stephen Utych examined the use of language in US presidents’ State of the Union speeches. They began by asking MTurk respondents to rate different words on a 1–7 scale from “very feminine” to “very masculine”. (Among the seven hundred words in their database, those rated most masculine were: ‘man’, ‘jock’, ‘cocky’, ‘thug’ and ‘roughneck’. Those rated least masculine were: ‘woman’, ‘heroine’, ‘mistress’, ‘adorable’ and ‘sassy’.) The researchers then content-analysed State of the Union speeches to see whether Republicans or Democrats were more likely to use very masculine or very feminine words. They found that Democratic presidents were significantly less likely to use very masculine words, and this was true when controlling for whether the government was divided and whether the country was at war.

It’s worth keeping in mind that even in this year’s election, the Democrats still won over 40% of the male vote. However, there are individual differences in masculinity and surveys find that men who vote Democratic are significantly less masculine.

In her book Masculinity, Femininity, and American Political Behavior, the political scientist Monika McDermott examined the role of masculinity and femininity in US politics. She analysed data from the Gendered Personalities and Politics Survey, in which respondents were asked to rate themselves on a number of traits, some of which are considered more masculine (e.g., “forceful”, “dominant”) and some of which are considered more feminine (e.g., “tender”, “cheerful”). Based on respondents’ answers, McDermott created measures of masculine and feminine personalities. She then examined whether these measures were predictive of party identity and voting behaviour. One of her main findings is shown below.

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On the left-hand side, we see that the Democrats have a nine-point advantage over the Republicans among women. However, on the right-hand side, we see that this gender gap is dwarfed by the femininity and masculinity gaps. Democrats are 24 points more “feminine” than Republicans, and are 18 points less “masculine”. McDermott confirmed that these gaps persist when controlling for gender itself.

Similar results were obtained in a recent survey by Pew Research. 53% of Republican men rated themselves as “highly masculine”, compared to just 29% of Democratic men. (This gap would presumably be even larger among whites.) And in an earlier survey, Pew Research asked Americans if people in our society look up to men who are “manly or masculine”. Among those who answered “yes”, 78% of Republicans said this is a “good thing”, compared to only 49% of Democrats.

These findings chime with a 2019 study by Melissa Deckman and Erin Cassese. The duo analysed data from a survey in which respondents were asked whether American society has grown “too soft and feminine”. They found that Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to answer in the affirmative. And interestingly, the largest gap was seen in the upper-class, where 85% of Republican men said that American society has grown “too soft and feminine”, compared to only 22% of Democratic men.⁴

Returning to this year’s election campaign, the Democrats did make a perfunctory effort to win over disaffected male voters. But it was too little, too late – and just came off as awkward and insincere.

To bolster her masculine credentials, Harris picked as her running mate Tim Walz, a Midwestern father who’d been a football coach and who served in the National Guard. Predictably, the move backfired. It quickly transpired that Walz had lied about having “carried weapons in war”, and that he suspiciously retired from the National Guard two months before his unit deployed to Iraq. Moreover, Walz came across as goofy and unprepared in his debate against the cool-headed Vance, with many saying he resembled a “deer in the headlights”.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, Harris didn’t make her gender a central part of her pitch to voters (which may account for her doing marginally better among men than Clinton did.) We are told, for example, that she purposefully donned navy rather than suffragette-white at the Democratic convention. But this is hardly the sort of gesture that any male voter would care about. And in any case, it wasn’t within Harris’s power to rein in the antics of her woke supporters, which inevitably shaped how her campaign was perceived. At one point, liberal activists were apparently distributing cards that said, “You don’t need to tell your boys you’re voting for Harris/Walz,” a message that surely had the opposite effect from the one intended.

It may have occurred to you that the argument of this article could also apply in reverse. Just as Democrats do worse among men, Republicans do worse among women. However, I would maintain that being too feminine is a bigger issue for the Democrats than being too masculine is for the Republicans. Why? Evidence suggests that both male and female voters associate leadership with stereotypically masculine traits. Indeed, there may be a fundamental asymmetry whereby women are more willing to support parties they see as masculine than men are to support parties they see as feminine.⁵

This doesn’t mean Democrats have to radically change their policy platform or engage in the kind of ostentatious bravado for which Trump has become known. But they would be wise to drop the schmaltzy rhetoric, distance themselves from academic feminism, and make it clear they don’t consider masculinity to be something “toxic”. My advice to the party: try being less feminine.

Noah Carl is Editor at Aporia.

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1. It’s also worth noting that since the mid 2010s, young female Americans have become much more likely to identify as liberal than young male Americans.

2. As an aside, the Democratic Party’s schmaltzy rhetoric is not only off-putting but also extremely fake. One minute they’re saying how much we need to care about those poor, undocumented migrants. The next minute they’re sending 2,000 pound bombs to be dropped on the Middle East.

3. I would venture to suggest that many women feel the same way, even if they aren’t quite as bothered as their male counterparts.

4. Studies have also found that measures of “precarious manhood” and “hegemonic masculinity” predicted voting for Trump over and above the effect of demographic characteristics and some other variables.

5. My claim is not that the reason Democrats lost this time, having won in 2020, is that were perceived as more feminine. (The evidence doesn’t support that.) Rather, it that they would do better in general if they were perceived as less feminine. There are a certain number of male votes they are leaving on the table or simply handing to the Republicans.