Who will win the election? In the tight Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump race, will the gender gap determine the winner on Election Day 2024?

WASHINGTON — For decades, men and women have voted differently in presidential elections.

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

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

An October crosstabulation analysis of 538 national polls by top-rated pollsters found the average gender gap was slightly larger: 10 points for Harris among women and 9 points for Trump among men.

This is at the level of historical norms. Since 1996, the gender gap has averaged 19 points in presidential exit polls.

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

“With women versus men at the top of the agenda and the importance of the abortion issue in the wake of the Dobbs decision, we may have a historically large gender gap this year that will reach a near abyss this year” – Whit Ayres, longtime expert affairs Republican pollster, told ABC News.

Harris’ recipe for success would be to gain women by a greater margin than lose men. In Trump’s case, it’s the opposite.

“When you’re talking about races in seven swing states, anything can be a deciding factor,” Ayres said.

Both campaigns are trying to turn this difference to their advantage

Harris has made reproductive freedom a centerpiece of her White House bid. In recent weeks, she’s rallied with Beyoncé in front of tens of thousands of Texas residents on abortion rights, visited a doctor’s office on a battlefield in Michigan and deployed high-profile surrogates like Michelle Obama to talk about the impact on women’s health after the case collapsed Roe v.

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

This is especially true, Lake said, among younger women. ABC News and Ipsos found Harris has a clear lead (40 percentage points) among women ages 19 to 29 compared to Trump’s 5-point lead among men in the same age range.

“There are record numbers of them registered, but we have to make sure they all turn out to vote,” Lake said of Gen Z women.

The Harris campaign also widely reached men, including black men, with its economic proposals. Polls this fall showed Black men’s support for Harris falling compared to President Joe Biden’s numbers in the group, though Harris appears to have regained ground. In the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, Harris had the support of 76% of Black men (Biden beat Black men by 79% in 2020) and 87% of Black women.

Live election updates: 80 million voted early as Trump and Harris crossed the finish line

Meanwhile, Trump has focused on attracting men to the polls, especially younger and apolitical men who vote at lower rates than other groups.

Both Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, met with popular podcast host Joe Rogan. On the trail, Trump surrounded himself with hypermasculine figures, including Elon Musk and Hulk Hogan. He embodied the personality of a strongman and used authoritarian rhetoric.

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

Trump has also stepped up efforts to court Latino voters – a demographic group with a significant gender divide – more this campaign than in his previous presidential runs. The ABC News/Ipsos poll found that Latino likely voters average 55% support for Harris and 41% support for Trump. (Biden won Latinos by 33 points in 2020, according to an ABC News exit poll.)

“I think Trump is trying to increase the male vote,” Ayres said. “I haven’t seen much contact with women.”

The former president’s recent message to women is that he will “protect” them, “regardless of whether women like it or not” – contradicting advice from advisers who he said called the statement “very inappropriate “. Harris quickly dismissed the remark as “offensive to everyone.”

Turnout will be key

According to the University of Florida’s election lab, more than 75 million Americans voted early.

The data shows that women are outpacing men in early voting turnout, and as of Sunday they were 54% to 43.6%. The situation is similar with previous elections, including 2020, when women constituted 53% of the electorate.

Tom Bonier, a Democratic strategist and CEO of data firm TargetSmart, said a notable finding is that women vote earlier at higher rates than men “by quite a significant difference in every battleground state except Nevada.”

It is not known which candidate the first voters will vote for. Unlike 2020, when Trump advised against voting by mail, more Republicans are voting early this year.

But Democrats see optimism on the margins.

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

538’s Mary Radcliffe contributed to this report.