The Gender Voting Gap Is Growing

Men and women are voting increasingly differently, and it is a trend that continues to grow. In Verian’s latest opinion poll, the gap remains at historically high levels. At the same time, it turns out that women have become radicalized to a much greater extent than men.

In Verian’s April survey, 64 percent of women said they would vote for one of the red-green parties if there were an election today. Among younger women aged 18-29, the proportion is even higher—more than two out of three would vote red-green.

– The voter barometer in April confirms the large difference in how women and men vote. The red-green parties reach their highest rating among women during the parliamentary term, says Per Söderpalm, head of opinion at Verian.

According to Verian, it was men who started moving further to the right about ten years ago, but the so-called rightward shift has somewhat subsided among young men since the 2022 election. Now, it is instead men in the 50-64 age group who are shifting more to the right.

Whether the announcement that the Sweden Democrats will participate in government in the autumn, in the event of a Tidö victory, has further influenced women’s opinions remains to be seen.

Women Less Tolerant

The same pattern can be seen in other Western countries, such as the USA. There, a survey shows that overall tolerance for opposing views is low among both male and female students, but men consistently show significantly more tolerance than women, regardless of their political opinion.

With the exception of male libertarians, who are somewhat more tolerant, men from all political ideologies have about the same level of tolerance as each other. The same goes for women.

In fact, men are more than 3.5 times as likely as women to be “completely tolerant” of opposing views.

The results are consistent with decades of literature examining political tolerance or support for censorship, showing that men on average are more tolerant and less eager to censor than women.

Women Becoming Radicalized

The increasingly different ways men and women vote is something Aron Flam addressed in one of his recent programs on his YouTube channel. There, he concluded that the claim that it is primarily men who have turned to the right is a truth with modifications—instead, it is women who have become radicalized and moved far to the left, while men have remained relatively stable. Flam also explored the reasons behind these trends.