Two Maps Illustrate The Deep Gender Divide Defining This Election

Rarely do you see a pair of images that perfectly illustrate the difference in the politics of men and women. This election is divided along a lot of lines and has featured some of the most shocking rhetoric in American politics in the past century. Even thinking about the candidates casually, it won't shock you that Trump draws much of his support for men and that Clinton is heavily favoured among women. But here's just how stark that divide is, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver. Here is the map if just men voted.

And here's just women.

A recent poll conducted by PRRI/The Atlantic found that Clinton led Trump by 33 points among women, and Trump led Clinton by 11 among men. Trump's margin over Clinton is roughly equivalent to Dwight Eisenhower's landslide victory over Adlai Stevenson. Clinton's over Trump requires that you take Eisenhower's double-digit victory and add in Lyndon B. Johnson's 23-point win over Barry Goldwater. Goldwater, it's worth noting, is the last best example of a firebrand conservative that flouted party values and was the subject of much speculation surrounding his fitness for the office. He won six states. Silver writes that the election would look much different were the franchise restricted to one gender or the other in a post explaining his findings. "Of course, if the electoral franchise were really restricted only to men, our politics would look a lot different," he writes. "And if it were restricted only to women, they’d look really, really different, perhaps with entirely different coalitions than the ones that prevail now." That's quite an understatement.