More Americans say gender hurts Harris’s chances, helps Trump’s: Poll

A plurality of voters say gender will hurt Vice President Harris’s chances of winning the White House and will help former President Trump, according to a survey published Thursday.

The Associated Press-NORC Research Center poll shows 38 percent of voters say being a woman hurts Harris’s chances of winning in November, while 34 percent say her gender will help. Another 26 percent say it won’t make a difference.

Meanwhile, 41 percent say Trump’s gender will help his campaign, compared to 13 percent who say it will hurt his chances; 45 percent say it won’t make a difference.

Men and women largely agree about the role gender plays in the 2024 campaign, according to the data.

For Harris, 39 percent of women and 37 percent of men say gender will hurt her chances. At the same time, 34 percent of both groups say gender will help the vice president’s campaign, while 25 percent of women and 27 percent of men see her gender as making no difference, the survey found.

Results are similar for Trump: 42 percent of women and 40 percent of men see gender as detrimental to his campaign, compared to 11 percent of women and 15 percent of men who say being a man will hurt him in the campaign. About 46 percent of women and 43 percent of men say it will make no difference.

There is a more significant split across political parties in views about the way gender will play a role in the election, now less than six weeks away.

Democrats are more likely to say the Democratic nominee’s gender will hurt her chances — including 52 percent of women and 53 percent of men — while 30 percent of Democratic men and women say her gender could be helpful.

Republicans are more likely to say gender will boost Harris’s chances, including 42 percent of women and 41 percent of men; while 27 percent of Republican women and 23 percent of Republican men think her gender will hurt chances.

For Trump, Democrats are more likely to see his gender as helping his campaign, including 56 percent of women and 52 percent of men. Only 7 percent of Democratic women and 11 percent of Democratic men say being a man will hurt the former president, the poll shows.

Republicans, meanwhile, mostly say gender won’t make a difference to the GOP nominee’s campaign, but 29 percent of women and 32 percent of men in the party say it will help his chances, while 16 percent of GOP women and 18 percent of GOP men say it will hurt his chances.

Americans see gender as more of a threat to Harris’s campaign against Trump than they saw with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s race against him in 2016, according to a poll taken ahead of that election.

While today, the former president has a 7-point advantage over the vice president on the helpfulness of their respective genders, back in 2016, gender was seen more as an advantage for Clinton, the poll notes.

At the time, 37 percent saw the former New York senator’s gender as helpful, compared to 29 percent who said it would hurt her campaign, and 33 percent who said it wouldn’t make a difference. For Trump, the vast majority saw gender as inconsequential to his chances, but 28 percent saw it as helpful, while 10 percent saw it as detrimental, the data shows.

The AP-NORC poll was conducted Sept. 12-16 with 2,028 adults nationwide. The margin of error is 3.1 percentage points.