The gender gap, we’re informed by some of the best polling analysts in the business, is bigger than ever. Ever, in this case, means since the election of 1980, when men were more willing than women to vote for Ronald Reagan and oust Jimmy Carter.

That spurred political journalists to emit multiple articles examining just exactly what was on women’s minds and probing their different and presumably superior opinions. The assumption was that the gender gap was costing Republicans votes. Being of a contrary disposition, in October 1982, I wrote an opinion article titled (paraphrasing Sigmund Freud), “What Do Men Want?”

For most of four decades, the gender gap wobbled around three or four points. Now, coinciding — perhaps not accidentally — with the era of President Donald Trump, it is bigger. In 2024, according to analyst Daniel Cox, the gender gap was 11 points among Black voters, 12 points among white voters, and 13 points among Hispanics.

And it seems to be getting wider among the young. Democratic pollster David Shor sees a gender gap of around 5% among over-70s and around 10% among those 35 to 70, dwarfed by a gap skyrocketing among the young, up above 20%.

Polling analyst Nate Silver, probing the sharp differences in partisan preference among young men and young women — men are far more Republican, women far more Democratic — built on longstanding findings that women tend to be more risk-averse than men. “Young men take a more risk-on view of the economy,” he wrote, while Democrats “emphasize security — minimizing downside risk — above the opportunity to compete and maximizing upside outcomes.”

On a related issue, Silver notes the longstanding research on happiness that shows young men are significantly more likely than young women to self-describe as happy, and other research showing that self-described conservatives report themselves much happier than self-described liberals.

On happiness studies, as Silver notes, “Age and religiosity matter a lot — religious people are happier, young people are sadder — but the liberal/conservative gap outweighs almost all other characteristics except age.”

“I was honestly surprised by how strong the relationship is,” Silver writes in a passage many of his political analyst readers found stunning. “Among voters who report poor mental health, liberals outnumber conservatives 45 to 19 percent. Among those who report excellent mental health, conservatives outnumber liberals 51-20.”

He concludes that young men being “lower on agreeableness and neuroticism” than women translates into greater support for Trump and for what has become a Trump Republican Party.