While there’s been plenty of commentary about President Biden’s slippage in the polls after his weak and faltering June debate performance, very little of this commentary has focused on the glaring gender divide among those who switched their support as a result of the debate.

According to a New York Times/Siena College poll, men accounted for virtually the entire 10-point swing toward Donald Trump after the debate, while Biden’s support among women actually ticked up a few percentage points.¹

In one of the few post-debate articles to try to make sense of this striking gender disparity, The Washington Post’s Monica Hesse argued that a lot of voters, especially male voters, seem to be less concerned with the actual substance of what the candidates stand for than with who comes across as the “stronger” man.²

“No matter what Donald Trump actually is, he plays a strongman on TV,” Hesse wrote. “Biden just didn’t seem forceful enough. He looked a little wobbly. Frail. So instead of voting for the good guy who was perhaps too feeble to achieve all of his agenda, they plan to vote for the guy who was strong enough to deliver a completely different agenda, which they don’t even want. The guy who was strong enough to spew falsehoods with gusto, rather than the guy who was too glitchy to hold him accountable. It’s the presidency as a push-up contest, and after all we’ve been through, in the eyes of some Americans, the greatest evil isn’t being vile. It’s being weak.”

If you’re teaching courses this fall about the 2024 election and the larger history of how dominant ideas about masculinity, manhood, and “strength” have shaped American presidential elections over time, don’t miss our film The Man Card: White Male Identity Politics from Nixon to Trump.

Created and co-written by acclaimed author and cultural critic Jackson Katz, and directed by award-winning filmmakers Peter Hutchison and Lucas Sabean, The Man Card examines right-wing efforts to position conservatives as defenders of traditional manhood, strength, and especially white male power and authority in the face of demographic change and struggles for equality. Propelled by a fast-paced and incisive analysis and illustrated with a storehouse of striking archival media clips, the film digs deep into radical shifts in white male voting patterns since the 1960s, offering timely insights into the growing gender gap, the rise of right-wing extremism, and the cultural dynamics that confront women who run for high office.

The Man Card is based on Katz’s award-winning book Man Enough: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton & the Politics of Presidential Masculinity.

For other MEF films that look at the politics of gender, race, and violent masculinity, don’t miss Healing from Hate: Battle for the Soul of a Nation and The Great White Hoax: Donald Trump & the Politics of Race and Class in America, featuring Tim Wise.