The opinions expressed below are those of Jon Keller and not of WBZ, CBS News or Paramount Global.

BOSTON – There are less than seven weeks until the presidential election, and new polls show Vice President Kamala Harris has opened a big lead over former President Donald Trump among a key voting bloc – women.

Could we be witnessing the emergence of a historic gender divide in the history of American politics?

“He doesn’t trust women, and they certainly don’t trust him,” said Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz in a recent speech. And for Walz and Harris, the attitude of Trump and his running mate JDVance towards women is becoming a decisive contribution to the election campaign.

Survey: Women prefer Democrats

In the latest national Suffolk University/USA Today poll, women lead Democrats by 21 percentage points, nearly twice the largest gap ever between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole in 1996.

And what seemed like a gaffe by Vance – his remark that “we’re basically run in this country by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their own lives” – is starting to feel like a hostile campaign strategy.

“They seem to know they’re not going to win with the women, and they tend to push a lot of almost misogynistic messages,” said Amanda Hunter, editor of the group Women on the Ballot. “Not just the ‘childless cat lady,’ but even tweets in all caps saying ‘I hate Taylor Swift,'” like Trump did after the pop megastar. approved the Democrats.

And just this week, Trump campaign representative Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of Arkansas, said at a Trump rally: “So my children keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris has nothing to keep her humble.” Harris has stepchildren with her husband, Doug Emhoff.

“The women seem to have had enough”

“Women seem to be really fed up with all of this,” Hunter said. “They’ve felt over the last few years that they’re on a rollercoaster with no way of getting off of Trump’s antics, and in that respect, politics tends to stress out a lot of women.”

And for Massachusetts-based journalist Bill Scher, who produces the Gender Gap Tracker for Washington Monthly Magazine, women’s reaction to all of this could be a deciding factor in November. “We see both anecdotally and in numbers that women say it’s abhorrent that someone is being looked down upon for choosing not to have children, for being a stepmom, or for choosing to marry later in life after having children.”

In the same Suffolk poll, Harris leads women by 21 percentage points, while Trump leads men by 13 percentage points. That is also a big gap, and Democrats need to narrow it as much as possible in the crucial swing states.

This may be why Harris’ campaign is not ridiculing men and their cultural heroes. There is an argument that Trump has largely given up on courting women and is now only trying to excite and maximize the male vote.

But if their plan is based on divide and conquer, it is risky at best.