Donald Trump Doesn’t Have a Gender Problem. He Has Two Gender Problems.

It is conventional wisdom that Donald Trump’s support has cratered among women, especially suburban women. But is that really true?

This goes through mid-October. Trump’s basic approval rating has been remarkably steady among both men and women.

However, voting intentions have changed a lot—though not in the way you might think. In 2016, Trump lost women by 13 points. According to a recent Pew poll, he’s likely to lose them by 16 points this year. That’s a 3-point drop and it means that Trump is suffering one of the worst blowouts among women of any presidential candidate ever.

Among men, Trump won by 11 points in 2016. This year he’s likely to lose them by 4 points. That’s an astonishing 15-point drop. It’s among men that he’s truly cratered. And this has happened across nearly all demographic and racial groups.

Other polls show things a little differently. A Washington Post poll conducted last week suggests that Trump has lost 11 points among men and 10 points among women. Either way, though, what this shows is that Trump isn’t doing badly just because women have turned against him. Everyone has turned against him, and men have turned as much or more than women.

It’s unclear why this is, since news accounts almost unanimously focus on (a) unhappy women and (b) rural men who remain Trump supporters. What they’re missing is the great mass of men who voted for Trump in 2016 but have become disillusioned with him for talking big but doing nothing to make their lives better. That’s the story of 2020.

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We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

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