will women help Trump or Harris win?

In July, Donald Trump went to the Republican National Convention to meet with James Brown. It’s a man’s, man’s, man’s world. Experts note that although Kamala Harris has been a vocal advocate for reproductive rights, she has not mentioned the word, being casual about “various aspects of her personality.” Although she could have become the country’s first female president, she avoided Hillary Clinton’s “vote for me to make history” strategy. Trump tried to win the votes of young people, while Harris’ campaign portrayed her as an advocate for abortion access.

So what role does gender play in US elections?

Game State

There is an undeniable gender gap when it comes to American voters, the width of which varies depending on who you ask. A Pew poll released last month put the figure at 17 points, with Trump leading by eight points among men and Harris by nine points among women. On Monday (AEDT) Hill had a gap of 16. Last Thursday Washington Monthly released its latest gender gap report ahead of Election Day, showing that the gender gap between presidential candidates was similar to the gap in 2020, when Trump lost to Joe Biden, but not as wide as the gap in 2016, when Trump beat Clinton . By this measure, Harris is weaker than Biden among both genders, but stronger among men compared to Clinton.

White women can decide the race

The gender gap is inseparable from the racial gap. In two straight elections, Trump has won the country’s largest voting bloc: white women.

As Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in New York Times“If white women had voted the same way as other women (in 2016), the gender barrier to the highest office in the land would have been broken and Donald Trump would not have become president.”

Have the last few years changed anything? Could there be a generational change? A Harvard Institute of Politics poll released last month showed Harris leading Trump by 13 points among white women under 30 (she leads non-white women under 30 by 55 points). Guardian It was recently reported that young women are “becoming increasingly gay, increasingly secular, and marrying later in life—all characteristics that tend to be associated with liberalism and support for the Democratic Party.” The publication cites a Gallup analysis that showed that liberal identification among white women has increased by 6% over the past 12 years.

Democrats focus on reproductive rights

Abortion is now illegal in about half of the US states. American voters are more likely to say that Harris, who in March became the first sitting US vice president (or president) to visit an abortion provider, has clearly explained her position on abortion than on Trump.

Trump takes responsibility for the cancellation Roe v. Wade (through his Supreme Court appointees) and repeats lies that Democrats support “baby executions” or abortions “after birth,” but last month said he would veto a federal abortion ban.

With more abortion rights measures on the ballot than ever before, voters were confident Harris would veto any national abortion ban or support legislation restoring Row protection if elected. (Voters, of course, could still vote for the abortion rights bill and the Republican nominee.)

Women just need a “protector”, right?

Sometimes, because of brand inconsistency, Trump makes a promise to women that is as vague as it is paternalistic. Nothing says you understand consent, respect women and want to give them freedom of choice and bodily autonomy than pledging to protect them “whether (they) like it or not,” as Trump said last week. So what does a convicted rapist vow to “protect” women from? In Trump’s own words, “migrants are coming” from “foreign countries who want to hit us with missiles.” The type of young woman who could help decide this election, American women between the ages of 25 and 34, are more likely to die than at any other time in more than 50 years, but not from the causes identified by Trump.

“Maternal mortality, suicide, homicide, and accidental overdose deaths among young women have risen sharply in recent years,” according to a 2023 Population Reference Bureau report. The disgraceful (for a rich country) maternal mortality rate in the United States will only get worse if reproductive rights remain at risk. (See: Texas, where the number of women who died during pregnancy, childbirth or shortly after childbirth rose sharply (56%) after the state’s 2021 abortion ban, far outpacing the slower rise in maternal deaths across throughout the country (11%) in the same period).

If Trump is going to “protect” women from the drug crisis, he first needs to know that fentanyl is an opioid.. And if he wants to “protect” women from murder, he may need to have tougher policies on gun violence and domestic violence. Statistics from America’s Bureau of Justice found that in 2021, more than one in three homicide deaths were committed by an intimate partner.

If women say no, go to the brothers

The gap between the political preferences of young men and young women is believed to have doubled over the past 25 years. While young women have moved to the left, young men have moved to the right.

Among the young men A. New York Times a poll last month showed Trump leading Harris 58% to 37%. So it’s no surprise that Trump has appeared on podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience and Barstool Sports’ Messing with the boys and also live with internet personality Adin Ross (where he was given a MAGA-decorated Tesla Cybertruck and a Rolex watch).

Meanwhile, Trump supporters continue to spread their cartoonish chauvinism. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently called Democrats a “hormone-addled 15-year-old daughter” and Trump their “dad” who, when he returns to the White House, will say: “You were a bad girl, you were a bad girl, and now you are spanked vigorously.” Elon Musk’s pro-Trump committee recently ran an ad warning against Harris because “America really can’t afford the C-word in the White House right now” (the C-word turns out to be… communist).

Former political correspondent Susan Milligan said the former president is targeting disaffected young people who want to reclaim their birthright to power.

“Trump gives them the right to say whatever they want about women, and his campaign is an implicit promise to give them control over women, including their bodies,” Mulligan wrote in his article. New Republic.

So what does this give us?

The final results of the NBC News poll couldn’t be closer: 49%-49%, with women supporting Harris by 16 points and men supporting Trump by 18 points. According to NPR, early voting trends are “making Republicans nervous and Democrats encouraged” as women make up 53.5% of voters in seven battleground states.

It’s possible that some men may not know whether their wives helped decide the election – a YouGov poll released this week found that one in eight American women admitted to having voted differently than their partners in the past without telling them . An ad recently released by the Harris campaign, narrated by movie star Julia Roberts, suggests that women can vote for Harris while their husbands are told the opposite: “What happens in the booth, stays in the booth.”

Trump said Roberts would cringe at the ad in the future: “It doesn’t say much about her relationship, but I’m sure she has a great relationship.”