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The fact that the gender gap is large and consistent across issues strongly suggests that it is driven by vibes and not issues. In other words, something is causing young men to identify as Republicans, or conservatives, or MAGA, or some similar right-wing identity, and they are then adopting the bog standard right-wing positions on all the issues, and something else is driving young women to identify as Democrats or liberals or some such and they are then adopting the bog standard left-wing positions.
And we aren't looking at a general argument about vibes like "Mummy Party vs Daddy Party" - we are trying to explain something that has grown dramatically since about 2010, in multiple Western countries. (This FT article shows the same pattern in the UK and Germany as well as the US, as well as a similar but not simultaneous pattern in South Korea - notably France seems to be an exception, with only a small gender gap in the exit polls for the recent legislative elections. There is also a minimal gender gap in the exit polls for the 2024 UK general election, but I think that is because so few young people voted for right-wing parties at all that a youth gender gap wouldn't show up in the overall results.
Why isn't the obvious explanation the best one? Women got more politically involved and embedded in the infrastructure of modern first world western countries, and what we are seeing now is just the way we are wired.
If a large number of people live in isolated societies where safety of the tribe is not an immediate concern, men's concerns about protecting the tribe are not valid. Why would they get any power they don't seize themselves - violently?
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Right...My post was trying to go past the Issues. That's why I wrote ... all the sections after "The Issues"
For expansion, I like this comment by @cofee_enjoyer and this one by @faceh
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