Who will win the election? In the tight race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, will the gender gap decide the winner on Election Day 2024?

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 slim 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 to be 16 points. Harris had an 11-point lead among women, 53% to 42%, while Trump had a 5-point lead among men, 50% to 45%.

An analysis of 538 cross-tabulations of October national polls from its top pollsters found that the average gender gap was slightly larger: 10 points for Harris among women and 9 points for Trump among men.

It is on par with historical norms. The gender gap averaged 19 points in the 1996 presidential exit polls.

Some observers, however, believe it could hit a new high in 2024.

“With a woman versus a man at the top of the ticket and the importance of the abortion issue in the wake of the Dobbs decision, we could have a historically large gender gap approaching a gender gap this year,” longtime Whit Ayres. The Republican pollster told ABC News.

The formula for success for Harris would be to win women more than he loses men. The reverse is true for Trump.

“When you’re talking about dead heat races in seven swing states, anything could be the deciding factor,” Ayres said.

Both campaigns are trying to turn the gap in their favor

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

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

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

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

Harris’s campaign also made extensive outreach to men, including black men, through her economic proposals. Polls earlier this fall showed black men’s support for Harris eroding from President Joe Biden’s numbers with the group, though Harris appears to be regaining ground. In the final ABC News/Ipsos poll, Harris had support from 76 percent of black men (Biden won black men 79 percent in 2020) and 87 percent of black women.

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

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

White men and women have long been among the Republican Party’s most powerful constituencies. Trump leads white men by 13 points, according to the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, and among non-college-educated white men and women by about 30 points. And while leading with white women, the largest voting bloc in the US, Trump leads Harris by just 4 points: 50% to 46%. (Trump won white women by 11 points in 2020 against Biden.)

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

“I think Trump is trying to increase his male vote,” Ayres said. “I haven’t seen a lot of relationships with women.”

The former president’s recent message to women is that he will “protect” them “whether women like it or not” — a line that went against the guidance of aides, who he claimed called the statement “very inappropriate.” Harris quickly slammed the comment as “offensive to everyone.”

Turnout will be key

More than 75 million Americans voted early, according to the University of Florida Election Lab.

Women outnumber men in early voting, the data show, 54 percent to 43.6 percent through Sunday. This is consistent with past elections, including 2020, when women made up 53% of the electorate.

Tom Bonier, a Democratic strategist and CEO of data firm TargetSmart, said one notable finding is that women are voting early at higher rates than men by “pretty substantial margins in every battleground state except Nevada.”

It’s not known which candidates early voters are voting for, and unlike in 2020, when Trump discouraged mail-in voting, more Republicans are voting early this year.

But Democrats see optimism in the margin.

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

Mary Radcliffe of 538 contributed to this report.