Gender gap over Trump in Wisconsin is massive

Men’s approval grows, while women’s approval shrinks

Women and men have long diverged in their views of Donald Trump.

But in Wisconsin, the gender gap over President Trump has grown to staggering proportions, a recent poll suggests.

In a statewide survey released last week by the Marquette Law School, 54% of men approved of Trump’s performance in office and 39% disapproved — for a “net approval” rating of plus 15.

But among women, 33% approved and 60% disapproved, for a net approval of minus 27.

Compared to the last time Marquette polled in Wisconsin — June 2017 — Trump’s net approval is down 8 points among women but up 14 points among men.

“In this case, it looks like more of the change (in the gender gap) is being driven by men becoming favorable to Trump” than by women becoming more negative, said Marquette pollster Charles Franklin.

In fact, Trump’s overall image among men — 53% now view him favorably, 41% unfavorably — has nev-

er been better in the Marquette survey, which has polled 16 times on Trump since 2015.

Men like Ken Ogi, a retired school administrator in Richland County, are contributing to that trend.

Ogi voted for Trump in 2016, but in an interview last fall sounded exasperated by the president’s behavior and rhetoric, saying, “I’d spank his butt if he was my kid and he was a third-grader doing that.”

Interviewed again last week, Ogi was far more positive. He cited the economy’s growth and the passage of the GOP tax cut. He also said he sees more of a method to Trump’s style than he did before.

“His words still make me cringe, but I have now started to pay more attention to his actions,” Ogi said.

In interviews with voters around Wisconsin, it’s pretty common to encounter couples with their own gender divide over Trump, either because the woman is less conservative politically or simply more bothered by Trump’s behavior and style.

At a home show earlier this year in Washington County, Ken Muenchow of Hartford said of the president, “Trump has got a terrible personality ... but I think he’s got the right idea. The economy is going up."

His wife, Maxine, was far more disdainful, saying of Trump: “He’s too much about himself ... calling people names … it’s a soap opera.” She voted against Trump and for Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 even though she typically votes Republican and expects to vote for GOP Gov. Scott Walker this year.

“It’s like a TV show that we’re living in our lives and it’s really disheartening. For one thing, how can people not be upset? He speaks out of both sides of his mouth,” said Shirley Miller, a Washington County voter who leans Democratic and was interviewed at the same home show. “We are anti-bullying … and he seems to be a huge bully, and he makes no bones about it.”

Trump won the 2016 election over Hillary Clinton with the biggest gender gap in polling history, so the pattern is not a new one. But the size of the current gender gap over Trump in Wisconsin is striking on several levels. It is bigger than the gender gap over Trump in most national polling. It is bigger than any gender gap over Trump in Marquette’s past surveys. It is much bigger than the gender gap over Democrat Barack Obama during his presidency.

And it is about three times bigger than the current gender gaps over other leading politicians in Wisconsin, including Walker, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

Why are men and women diverging even more than before in their views of Trump?

One contributing factor is that Republican voters overall have continued to rally behind Trump. Trump’s image has gotten much better among both Republican men and Republican women since the summer of 2016: 53% of GOP-leaning voters viewed him favorably in August 2016; today 88% do.

Since Republicans are disproportionately male, that trend serves to widen the gender gap. There is also some evidence in Marquette’s polling that men are tilting a bit more Republican now than they did two or three years ago.

Among Democrats, both men and women have very negative views of Trump. But Democratic men (82% view Trump unfavorably) aren’t quite as negative as Democratic women (91% view him unfavorably).

The polling doesn’t tell us how much of the gender gap is being driven by Trump’s style and rhetoric, his policy views, issues like the sexual harassment debate and scandals or Trump's personal history (from the Access Hollywood tape released before the 2016 election to more recent allegations about a past relationship with an adult film performer). In Marquette's polling, men in Wisconsin are also much more positive in their assessments of the economy than women are.

“I think this says a lot about the nature of Trump’s personality and the connection of gender issues to Trump,” said Franklin, who points out that “gender issues” surround Trump in a way that they don’t for many other politicians.

The gender gap over Walker is much smaller than it is over Trump: 51% of men and 43% of women approve of Walker’s performance. That’s less than half the size of Trump’s gender gap. And in Walker’s case, the gender gap is mostly attributable to the fact that men are more likely than women to be Republican. There is very little difference in recent polls between Republican men and Republican women over Walker or between Democratic men and Democratic women. But in Trump’s case, there is a meaningful gender gap between men and women of the same party.

Any gap has two sides to it, which makes the gender gap a very mixed bag politically for Trump. His overall job rating in Wisconsin (43% approve, 50% disapprove) would be far worse were it not for his steadily rising image among male voters. At one point in the summer of 2016, only 29% of Wisconsin men viewed him favorably. That rose to the high 30s in the fall of 2016, to the high 40s last year and to 53% in the new 2018 survey. Trump is now slightly more popular with men in Wisconsin than Walker is.

But the flip side of the gender gap is Trump’s persistent unpopularity with women. Trump’s image among Wisconsin women improved when he took office from the extreme negatives of the campaign. But it has declined slightly since March 2017.

In the new Marquette poll, 60% of women disapproved of his job performance and 63% said the president doesn’t show good judgment.

There is also a modest enthusiasm gap between men and women: 55% of women but just 50% of men say they’re very enthusiastic about voting this fall. Enthusiasm is not up among men in Wisconsin compared to this point in the last mid-term campaign (2014). But it is up significantly among women. And it is especially up among Democratic women: 60% say they’re very enthusiastic about voting in the November elections, compared to 47% in March of 2014.

If that pattern holds, it could translate into higher turnout for Democrats in the fall mid-terms.