WASHINGTON– Men and women have been voting differently in presidential elections for decades.

But could the gender gap be the deciding factor in this year’s tight 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 was 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 crosstabs of national polls conducted in October by its top-rated pollsters found that the average gender gap was slightly wider: 10 points for Harris among women and 9 points for Trump among men.

This is on par with historical norms. The gender gap has averaged 19 points in presidential exit polls since 1996.

Some observers, however, believe it could reach a new level in 2024.

“With a woman versus a man at the top of the list and with the prominence of the abortion issue in the wake of the Dobbs decision, we could have a historically large gender gap approaching a gender abyss this year,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster told ABC News.

The formula for success for Harris would be to win women by more than she loses men. The opposite is true for Trump.

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

Both campaigns try to reverse the difference in their favor

Harris has made reproductive freedom a centerpiece of her White House bid. In recent weeks, he has rallied with Beyoncé in front of tens of thousands in Texas about abortion rights, visited a doctor’s office in battleground 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 that same age range, ABC News and Ipsos found.

“They are registered in record numbers, but we have to make sure they all turn out to vote,” Lake said of Gen Z women.

Harris’ campaign has also reached a broad reach among men, including Black men, through her economic proposals. Polls earlier this fall showed black men’s support for Harris eroding relative to President Joe Biden’s numbers in the group, although Harris appears to be making up ground. In the final ABC News/Ipsos poll, Harris won the support of 76% of Black men (Biden won Black men with 79% in 2020) and 87% of Black women.

Live Election Updates: 80 million have voted early as Trump and Harris race to finish

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

Both Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, sat down with popular podcast host Joe Rogan. Trump surrounded himself with hypermasculine figures along the way, including Elon Musk and Hulk Hogan. He has embodied a strongman persona and has redoubled his authoritarian rhetoric.

White men and women have long been among the Republican Party’s strongest constituencies. Trump leads among 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 although he leads with white women, the largest voting bloc in the United States, Trump is only leading Harris by 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 bids. The ABC News/Ipsos poll found an average of 55% support for Harris among likely Hispanic voters and 41% for Trump. (Biden won among Hispanics by 33 points in 2020, according to the ABC News exit poll.)

“I think Trump is trying to increase the male vote,” Ayres said. “I haven’t seen much approach to women.”

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

Participation will be key

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

Women are outperforming men in turnout in early elections, data shows, between 54% and 43.6% as of Sunday. This is in line with past elections, including 2020, when women made up 53% of the electorate.

Tom Bonier, 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 is unknown which candidate early voters are voting for, and unlike 2020, when Trump discouraged voting by mail, more Republicans will vote early this year.

But Democrats see optimism at the margins.

“There are simply more women in the electorate and they vote more,” said Elaine Kamarck, a researcher at the Brookings Institution who worked on several presidential campaigns. “Add in her preference for Harris over Trump, and this should be very good news for Harris.”

Mary Radcliffe of 538 contributed to this report.