Harris and Trump are navigating Pennsylvania’s gender gap with bro podcasts and ladies’ room Post-its

As crowds gathered for Donald Trump’s rally Saturday at Pennsylvania State University, a red, white, and blue pickup truck rolled in, decorated with an image of the former president as an impossibly ripped young man, wearing a gold MAGA chain and packing two tattooed revolvers.

Men wore T-shirts that read “You Missed,” with an illustration of Trump flipping both middle fingers to his would-be assassin.

“He’s speaking on our behalf. It’s not just men, but we relate to him,” said Dennis Fallon, 70, who owns an auto-repair shop in State College. “Listen, I want the best quarterback I can put on the field. And he looks like the best quarterback to me. … And once we get him in, I want him to have the balls to do what he said.”

A day later, in a Black evangelical church in Philadelphia, Monica Willoughby listened to Harris proclaim that “joy will cometh in the morning!” to a congregation filled with ladies honoring the vice president’s style by wearing lipstick, pearls, and Converse sneakers.

“Women, they see her as the future,” said Willoughby, a 55-year-old postal worker. “I mean, she’s already broken the glass ceiling, and they just see her as opening more doors. And you know, I want to say it starts with women. We’re the mother of everything. I think we have the voice of the country right now.”

In a neck-and-neck race in Pennsylvania, a stark gender gap complicates the 50-50 political picture. Trump leads with men in the state by 13 points, an advantage that expands among those under 50. Harris has an 18-point lead with women here, according to the October Inquirer/New York Times/Siena College poll. That gender divide is reflected in other swing states and in national polls.

The two campaigns have responded to those numbers differently. Trump has stoked the hypermasculine fervor, to almost comedic lengths, while Harris has run a campaign that rarely mentions gender or her historic candidacy — with outside groups stepping in to try and bolster her female support in the first presidential election since the loss of the national right to an abortion.

In a particularly testosterone-drenched weekend in Pennsylvania earlier this month, Trump told a locker-room story about Arnold Palmer’s manhood, cheered at a Pittsburgh Steelers-New York Jets football game, and then released an AI-generated image of himself on Truth Social suited up like a Steelers linebacker.

The strategy has been to let the GOP candidate walk and talk like a man — macho, commanding, devoid of nuance, and ready for a fight. Much of his target audience, say experts, is made up of working-class male voters, some of whom struggle to raise families and believe their natural cultural conservatism is under attack by “woke” ideas about transgender rights, diversity, and equity.

Meanwhile, younger guys feel disillusioned by a country that they believe has no place for them. They say they are priced out of universities as well as the housing market, the job market, even the marriage market. About 75% of Gen Z men, who were isolated by the pandemic and whose self-esteem has eroded, say they are stressed out by the prospect of a bleak future, according to a poll by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics.

“I’m single right now, but I think I’d like to get married in the future,” said Brett Hamilton, 47, a pharmacist from Utah, who flew into Pennsylvania for the Trump rally. “Right now, I just can’t afford a home.”

Educational divides likely widen the gulf. Women continue to outpace men in college enrollment and have surpassed them in college degrees. Both parties experienced an educational realignment that has likely contributed to the gendered ideological split.

In just four years, the share of young men identifying as Democrats nationally dropped seven percentage points, while the share of those saying they are Republicans increased by seven percentage points, a net shift of 14 points, according to John Della Volpe, director of polling at Harvard’s politics institute.

It’s evidence, Della Volpe wrote, of Trump’s “master class in bro-whispering.”

“Trump is doubling down on the strategy of being the masculine outsider to appeal to men not normally engaged in the political system,” said Lara Putnam, a University of Pittsburgh history professor who studies Pennsylvania electoral trends.

But it’s a risky tactic. Young men are traditionally the least reliable voting bloc.

To stay in touch with his fan boys, Trump serenades them with “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” — the James Brown song played twice in one 45-minute span on Saturday. He shows up at Ultimate Fighting Championship matches. Trump has become a regular on bro-oriented podcasts, where he talks about crypto and AI — topics that rev guys’ motors, according to Kush Desai, Trump’s Pennsylvania communications director.

In the commonwealth, the campaign does a lot of “tailgate outreach,” Desai added, with representatives showing up in the parking lots before Eagles, Steelers, and Penn State games.

“We’re going to young men where they are,” said Desai. If that’s not enough, the campaign makes sure to put Trump’s voice and face in ads that run during NFL games.

“Football is ubiquitous in Pennsylvania,” said political scientist Jennie Sweet-Cushman of Chatham University, an expert on gender and politics. “But I don’t remember a previous election year when it’s been so central to a presidential campaign than now. You even had Elon Musk at a Steelers game, waving the Terrible Towel.”

Practically everyone who can tell you what a Tush Push is has seen the 30-second Trump ad featuring footage of Harris saying she supports taxpayer-paid gender transition surgery for inmates. A narrator intones that Harris is “for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

That message has resonated for Ron Griffin, a churchgoer at the West Philly church where Harris spoke.

“I’m against transsexual, gender stuff. I’m against all that because it’s against God’s word,” said Griffin. “Trump ain’t no better, but he’s for stuff that’s in the Bible. I have to ride with who is for the Lord.”

The Trump campaign has paid at least $17 million for the ad, which, as of Oct. 19, had played 30,000 times, mostly during football games in swing states like Pennsylvania, according to NPR.

Being seen as a pugnacious bully, Trump strategists argue, extends to how people think Trump would defend America.

“His personality is much more formidable,” said Wesley Ray, 19, a Penn State business major at the Saturday rally. “I think that’s good for keeping other countries in check”

And Democratic derisions of “toxic masculinity” may also be helping Trump.

“Men are sick and tired of hearing about that,” said Jondavid Longo, the millennial mayor of Slippery Rock, Butler County (population 3,000). “They’re simply the way God intended men to be.”

Longo, 34, who rode a Trump bus around the state to stump for the former president, said women admire strong men and called Trump a “man’s man.”

“And there’s nothing ungenuine about that.”

Harris has a more complicated task when it comes to working the gender gap to her advantage.

A woman has never been elected president, and Hillary Clinton’s much-repeated promise in 2016 to shatter “that highest and hardest glass ceiling” fell flat.

But perhaps most important, Harris has a more diverse coalition to assemble. Polls show that while Trump supporters, regardless of gender, are voting for him because of his policies related to the economy and immigration, Harris’ supporters are split.

Men who backed her in a recent Franklin and Marshall poll were much more likely to cite the economy as their reason, while women cited women’s reproductive rights.

That’s likely why, when Harris is asked about the gender gap, she dismisses it — despite it being just about the only statistically significant thing captured in Pennsylvania’s polls.

“It’s not what I see in terms of my rallies, in terms of the interactions I’m having with people,” Harris said at the Warwick Rittenhouse Square last week, asked about the gender gap. “What I am seeing is, in equal measure, men and women talking about their concerns about the future of our democracy.”

And unlike Trump, who has made next to no direct appeals to women save for a comment about “being their protector,” Harris is actively trying to appeal to men, specifically Black men.

But Harris surrogates and outside Democratic groups are leaning into the gender divide — challenging Trump’s hyper-machismo and trying to capitalize on the powerful force that women could play in the election.

“If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women will become collateral damage to your rage,” former first lady Michelle Obama said at a Kalamazoo, Mich., rally for Harris this week. “So are you as men prepared to look into the eyes of the women you love and tell them you supported this assault?”

Pro-Harris sticky notes have popped up in ladies’ restrooms across the country, reminding them their vote is private and urging them to cast it. Ads running nationally by the group Vote Common Good and voiced by Julia Roberts urge Christian women to back Harris — even if they have to keep it a secret from their husbands.

“The one place in America where women still have a right to choose …, ” Roberts says in the ad. “What happens in the booth stays in the booth.”

Abortion rights were a huge driver of Democratic votes in the midterm elections and could be again. While abortion is legal up to 24 weeks under Pennsylvania law, 55% of women said they thought the presidential election would have an effect on abortion rights in the state, according to a recent poll.

Emily Gale, who works for Supermajority, a Democratic group canvassing women in Pennsylvania, said it’s not just abortion rights driving women to Harris but also a focus on childcare costs, housing, and the working and poor working class.

“I think she’s playing it safe, but I think she’s getting her point across by what she’s saying, by her platform,” Gale said of Harris.

Ailani Lasley, an 18-year-old from Philadelphia, fears the reason for the gap is simple: misogyny.

“I think specifically with men in this country, there’s a deeply ingrained pride when it comes to being a man, and something like being a president is something that they deem a man’s job,” she said. “It’s even worse because she’s a woman of color.”

While Lasley said she’s nervous about how that plays into Harris’ chances, Keisha White, a 34-year-old West Philadelphia resident, pointed to recent history.

“The times are changing,” White said. “Now that we have a female mayor, I think things will be different.”

Staff writers Ximena Conde, Gillian McGoldrick, Jake Blumgart, and Anna Orso contributed to this article.