WASHINGTON– Men and women have voted differently in presidential elections for decades.

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

The final ABC News/Ipsos poll before Election Day, released Sunday, found the gender gap among all likely voters was 16 points. Harris had an 11-point advantage among women, 53% to 42%, while Trump had a 5-point advantage among men, 50% to 45%.

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

This corresponds to historical norms. The gender gap has averaged 19 points in presidential exit polls since 1996.

However, some observers believe that it could reach a new level in 2024.

“With female versus male at the top of the list and with the importance of the abortion issue following the Dobbs decision, we could have a historically large gender gap, close to a gender chasm this year,” longtime veteran Whit Ayres said. Republican pollster told ABC News.

The formula for success for Harris would be to gain more women than she loses men. The opposite is true for Trump.

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

Both campaigns are trying to close the gap in their favor

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

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

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

“They’re registered in record numbers, but we need to make sure they all go out and vote,” Lake said of Gen Z women.

Harris’ campaign also raised widespread awareness among men, including black men, through her economic proposals. Polls from early fall showed Black men’s support for Harris eroding compared to President Joe Biden’s numbers within the group, although Harris appears to be regaining ground. In the final ABC News/Ipsos poll, Harris had the support of 76% of black men (Biden won 79% of black men in 2020) and 87% of black women.

Live election updates: 80 million people voted early as Trump and Harris sprint to finish

Trump, meanwhile, has worked to get men out the polls, particularly younger, apolitical men who vote less than other groups.

Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, spoke with popular podcast host Joe Rogan. Trump surrounded himself with hyper-masculine figures on the runway, including Elon Musk and Hulk Hogan. He embodied a strongman persona and doubled down on his authoritarian rhetoric.

White men and women have long been among the Republican Party’s most powerful voters. Trump leads among white men by 13 points, according to the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, and among white men and women without college degrees by about 30 points. And although he leads with white women, the largest voting bloc in the United States, Trump leads Harris by only 4 points: 50% to 46%. (Trump won white women by 11 points in 2020 over Biden.)

Trump has also stepped up his efforts to court Hispanic voters, a demographic that presents its own gender divide, more this campaign than in his previous presidential bids. The ABC News/Ipsos survey found an average of 55% support for Harris among likely Hispanic voters and 41% for Trump. (Biden won Hispanics by 33 points in 2020, according to the ABC News exit poll.)

“I think Trump is trying to increase his vote among men,” Ayres said. “I haven’t seen a lot of awareness towards women.”

The former president’s recent message to women is that he will “protect” them “whether they like it or not” – a line that went against the advice of his advisers, who he said had called the statement from “highly inappropriate”. Harris quickly seized on the comment as “offensive to everyone.”

Participation will be key

More than 75 million Americans voted early, according to the University of Florida election laboratory.

Women are outpacing men in early voter turnout, data shows, 54% to 43.6% on Sunday. This is in line with previous elections, including 2020, where women made up 53% of the electorate.

Tom Bonier, a Democratic strategist and CEO of data firm TargetSmart, said one takeaway is that women vote earlier than men, by “pretty substantial margins in all the battleground states, at ‘Nevada exception’.

It’s unclear which candidate early voters are voting for and unlike 2020, when Trump discouraged mail-in voting, more Republicans are voting early this year.

But Democrats see optimism in the margins.

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

Mary Radcliffe of 538 contributed to this report.