Anatomy of the Women’s Vote in the 2024 Presidential Election

The gender gap in American politics has become chasm in recent years and 2024 was no exception.

In November, AP VoteCast, a survey of voters conducted on and around Election Day, found Republican President-elect Donald Trump won male voters by 12 percentage points, while Democratic nominee Kamala Harris won female voters by six percentage points. That adds up to an 18-point gender gap.

But the idea that “women are Democrats” does not completely hold up when viewed through the 15 American Communities Project’s county types. For instance, while Harris won the women’s vote by more than 20 percentage points in some community types, Trump won women by more than 30 points in others.

Furthermore, the differences in the women’s vote are not so easily explained with the usual urban/rural, married/non-married, college degree/no degree splits. Rather, there appears to be other cultural factors at play in the way women look at politics today.

The Vote by Community Type

One thing that jumps out from the data is Harris only won the women’s vote in the four ACP types that she carried overall: the African American South, Big Cities, College Towns, and Urban Suburbs. In every other community type, Trump carried the women’s vote — and by more than 60 percentage points in the Aging Farmlands and Evangelical Hubs.

The fact that there are differences in the community types is not a big surprise. The communities in the ACP look and feel very different and experience the world, and politics, very differently. For instance, Democrats tend to do very well with African American women and less well with white, non-Hispanic women. But the size of Trump’s win among women in some places stands in stark contrast to the dominant political narrative.

What’s even more revealing: Some community types had a very small gender gap.

For instance, in the Aging Farmlands and Evangelical Hubs, the difference between the Trump vote among men and women was a scant four percentage points and six percentage points, respectively. In those communities, a larger social conservatism may override any gender difference.

In others — such as the Exurbs and Hispanic Centers — the gender gap was higher, but still below the national average of 18 percentage points.

The larger point is that there were clearly issues that had a big impact on women in 2024, such as abortion, but these did not motivate women the same way everywhere, or rather, other issues may have motivated them more.

Parsing Patterns

Looking at the presidential vote among women shows some broad patterns. Women in urban-oriented places tended to go more heavily for Harris and women in rural areas more heavily for Trump, following the “suburban women have become Democrats” narrative.

But there were exceptions. Consider the Military Posts, those traditionally conservative communities that often sit in fairly rural locales. Harris got 47% of the vote there, more than she received in the Exurbs and Middle Suburbs, and far more than she captured in, say, Rural Middle America.

And while analysts point to a college degree as a crucial factor in the leftward lean among voters, and particularly women voters, the data are complicated.

It is true that female voters in the Urban Suburbs were the most likely to have a four-year college degree in 2024 (52% according to AP VoteCast), and Harris won them by 24 percentage points, the highest of any community type. But the Exurbs weren’t that different in terms of educational attainment (45% of the women voters have degrees), and Trump won those communities by nine points.

Meanwhile, Trump won women in the Middle Suburbs by only seven percentage points, even though the women in those communities were far less likely to have a college degree (36% did in 2024).

Some of these differences may be due to the different circumstances in each kind of place.

For instance, women in the Exurbs tend to be from higher-income households, which may mean they are more secure in their ability to deal with any hardship caused by an abortion ban. Exurban women may also be more socially conservative than their Middle Suburb counterparts.

Again, it’s not a surprise that the vote from women, who make up more than 50% of the U.S. population, is complicated. But the numbers here serve as a reminder that broad, general characterizations about large segments of the electorate can be misleading. And the political differences at the community level in the United States can be vast and driven by a wide range of factors.