Young men and women are diverging politically. That could shape the 2024 election.

CNN —

Democrats are facing the threat of a gender gap that could imperil the traditional advantage among younger voters that the party has enjoyed for decades and that President Joe Biden likely needs to defeat former President Donald Trump.

While Democrats are counting on a big backlash among younger women against the rollback of abortion rights to help propel Biden, a backlash among younger men against changing gender roles could help lift Trump.

Both younger men and women are broadly discontented with the economy and Biden’s job performance, polls show. But the anger and frustration over the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning the federal right to abortion provides Biden a powerful tool to expand his support among young women unhappy with him on other fronts, strategists in both parties agree. For many younger women, pollsters say, the loss of abortion rights has become not only a threat in itself, but a symbol of a broader attempt to reverse women’s gains in economic status and pressure them back into more traditional gender roles.

Meanwhile, Biden faces a dual challenge with younger men: Not only is abortion less of a motivating issue for them, but there’s evidence that many of them are receptive to the messaging of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, with its implicit promise to restore traditional racial and gender hierarchies. In a striking new Pew Research Center national survey, for instance, fully two-fifths of the men younger than 50 who are supporting Trump agreed that women’s gains in society have come at the expense of men. That was not only more than double the share of younger Biden-supporting men who agreed with that sentiment, but considerably larger even than the share of older Tru