Will the gender gap decide the 2024 election?

Men and women have voted differently in presidential elections for decades.

But could the gender gap be the deciding factor in this year's razor-thin race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump?

The final ABC News/Ipsos poll before Election Day, released Sunday, showed the gender gap among all likely voters to be 16 points. Harris had an 11-point lead among women, 53% to 42%, while Trump had a 5-point lead among men, 50% to 45%.

A 538 percent analysis of national poll crosstabs from the top-rated pollsters in October found that the average gender gap was slightly larger: 10 points for Harris among women and 9 points for Trump among men.

This corresponds to historical norms. Since 1996, the gender gap in presidential polls has averaged 19 points.

However, some observers believe it could reach new levels in 2024.

“With a woman versus a man at the helm, and with the prominence of the abortion issue following the Dobbs decision, we could have a historically large gender divide approaching a gender divide this year,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster expert, told ABC News.

The winning formula for Harris would be to win women more than she loses men. For Trump, the opposite is true.

“When it comes to dead heat races in seven swing states, anything could be the deciding factor,” Ayres said.

Both campaigns are trying to use the distance to their advantage

Harris has made reproductive freedom a centerpiece of her bid for the White House. In recent weeks, she marched with Beyoncé for abortion rights before tens of thousands in Texas, visited a doctor's office in embattled Michigan and sent high-profile surrogates like Michelle Obama to speak about the impact on women's health in the wake of Roe vs . Calf.

“I think you can't underestimate the power of the abortion issue,” Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster, told ABC News.

This is particularly true for younger women, Lake said. Harris has an overwhelming lead (40 percentage points) among women ages 19 to 29, compared to Trump's 5-point lead among men in the same age group, ABC News and Ipsos found.

“They are registered in record numbers, but we need to make sure they all vote,” Lake said of Generation Z women.

Harris' campaign broadly reached out to men, including black men, through her economic proposals. Polls earlier this fall showed black men's support for Harris declining compared to President Joe Biden's group, although Harris appeared to be gaining ground again. In the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, Harris received the support of 76% of Black men (Biden won by 79% among Black men in 2020) and 87% of Black women.

Trump, meanwhile, has focused on getting men to vote, particularly younger and apolitical men, who are less likely to vote than other groups.

Both Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, met with popular podcast host Joe Rogan. Trump has surrounded himself with hypermasculine figures on his trail, including Elon Musk and Hulk Hogan. He embodied the personality of a strong man and relied on authoritarian rhetoric.

White men and women have long been among the Republican Party's strongest voters. According to the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, Trump leads among white men by 13 points and among white men and women without a college degree by about 30 points. And while he leads with white women, the largest voting bloc in the US, Trump is only ahead of Harris by 4 points: 50% to 46%. (Trump won among white women by 11 points against Biden in 2020.)

Trump has also increased his efforts this campaign to woo Hispanic voters, where there is also a significant gender gap, more so than in his previous presidential runs. The ABC News/Ipsos poll found support for Harris among Hispanic likely voters at an average of 55% and support for Trump at 41%. (According to the ABC News exit poll, Biden won the Hispanic vote by 33 points in 2020.)

“I think Trump is trying to increase his vote among men,” Ayres said. “I haven’t seen much approaching women.”

The former president's latest message to women is that he will “protect” them “whether women like it or not” – a statement that was at odds with the advice of advisers, who he said described the statement as “very “inappropriate”. Harris quickly dismissed the comment as “insulting to everyone.”

Voter turnout will be crucial

According to the University of Florida's Election Lab, more than 75 million Americans voted early.

The data shows that women are outperforming men in voter turnout, 54% to 43.6% as of Sunday. This is consistent with previous elections, including in 2020, when women made up 53% of the electorate.

Tom Bonier, a Democratic strategist and CEO of data firm TargetSmart, said one notable finding is that women “vote earlier than men by quite large margins in all battleground states except Nevada.”

It is not known which candidate early voters will cast their ballots for, and unlike in 2020, when Trump discouraged mail-in voting, more Republicans are voting early this year.

But Democrats see optimism on the sidelines.

“There are simply more women in the electorate and they are voting more often,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has worked on several presidential campaigns. “If you add in her preference for Harris over Trump, that should be very good news for Harris.”

Mary Radcliffe of 538 contributed to this report.