Is There Really a Political Divide by Gender Within Generation Z?

It seems to have become fashionable to claim the opening of a chasm between men and women of the younger generation in this political era--with women skewing left, and men right. Indeed, the editorial board of the Washington Post declared last November that the divide might threaten the institution of marriage itself (!).

I have to admit myself skeptical of such claims, frankly, because the mainstream news media loves, Loves, LOVES to play up "polarization." This is partly because this enables it to bemoan that polarization in that way that lets their centrist selves feel that they are the "adult in the room" (Oh how they love that hackneyed phrase!), but more importantly because emphasizing divisions of gender, ethnicity, region, religiosity, "culture" and all the rest gets us away from those matters of hard interest and policy that the media does not love reporting about (as that study discussed in the Columbia Journalism Review demonstrated quantitatively, not least by looking at the front page of the Post itself).

Moreover, it seems there is more than the media's well-known prejudices in support of such skepticism. As Vox's Zack Beauchamp demonstrates, the conclusions that those promulgating the gender divide narrative derived from polling data are far from unimpeachable, or broadly supported, especially if one remembers just how large a matter politics is. Thus Mr. Beauchamp in the end, while admitting that it is not the most satisfying answer, says that the only honest one is "We don't know"--which seems to me excellent reason to be attentive to what we actually do know, which is that there has been an enormous public-elite divide on many of the issues that transcends the lines the media like to stress, and the truth an uncomfortable one for the guardians of the "conventional wisdom."