Vice President Harris' strategy to capitalize on the surge in support for women ultimately failed, suggesting that historic gender disparities may not materialize by Election Day.
White women supported Trump for the third consecutive term, and the former president has also made inroads with Latino voters and young women. Trump reportedly improved his vote share with Latina women by 8 points in 2020 edison research. And among young women, President Trump improved by 11 points compared to the previous administration. NBC News Exit Poll.
While Harris won with women, Trump's gains with that group of voters have left Democrats reeling as they try to understand what went wrong on election night.
“At the end of the day, women voters across the country have considered whether their lives are better than they were four years ago, and decided they're not,” said Lauren Zelt, executive director of Maggie's List. he said. Elect conservative women to public office.
Ahead of Election Day, Republicans reiterated their argument that women are often the economic gatekeepers of their families, and predicted that many voters would prioritize the economy amid high inflation.
Democrats, on the other hand, prioritized access to abortion to energize women and framed Harris' campaign as a fight for fundamental freedoms.
“Democrats made the mistake of lumping all women together and assuming we would vote as a bloc on one issue,” said Christine Davison, a national Republican strategist.
Democrats have also acknowledged major flaws in their economic messaging, which many argue started with President Biden.
“For some reason, for over a year now, President Biden and the Biden team have not been able to tell the American people what they are actually experiencing when it comes to the cost of groceries, gas, and household bills, or that they have been told by the federal government that the They either point out that we're obscuring the data.''If you're a low-income or middle-income earner and the price of milk used to be $1.75, the Reserve Fund or the think tank or the white paper would tell people, “No. The economy is in great shape.' ” he said. John Reinisch, Democratic strategist.
“That washed up [Harris’s] She obviously had a really hard time digging it out,” Reinisch said.
Harris wanted to maximize turnout among women voters, who have historically supported Democratic presidential candidates. Edison said former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Biden himself achieved double-digit demographic wins in recent cycles.
Harris maintained her lead over Trump this time, but by a narrower margin than her predecessor. Leading the girls by 7 points,According to AP pollwas smaller than the others. Biden's lead among women in 2020 was about 12 points over Trump.According to the same polling organization.
In an election that was expected to have abortion as a key motivating issue, Republicans have been concerned about Trump's perceived deterioration in support among women in the months leading up to voting. This number may come as a surprise to some.
Trump has long been at odds with the bloc during his campaign, boasting about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade and mocking his female competitors. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance also received backlash for a past video in which he said the country was run by “childless cat ladies.”
“Maybe they didn't like some of the jokes or the rhetoric, but ultimately they were more concerned about the economy and the safety of their community,” Davison said of women voters.
Democrats had hoped that the issue of access to abortion would be a big motivator for women. According to preliminary information ABC News exit poll dataNineteen percent of all women said abortion was the most important issue to them, and 42 percent of women under 30 said the same. But while voters were certainly concerned about the issue, that didn't necessarily translate into support for Harris.
According to CNN exit polls, voters rank abortion as the third most important issue after democracy and the economy. In the same poll, 65% of voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, but those same voters did not associate the issue with voting against President Trump or the Republican Party.
Both Democrats and Republicans acknowledge the existence of a divided vote, especially on abortion.
Trump won Florida by about 13 points, but 57% of voters in the state voted to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. The amendment received just under the 60% threshold for passage. And abortion rights ballot measures won in Trump's battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, as well as red-hued Missouri.
“This shows that straight tickets have become more and more of a reality over the years, and it seems as if more people in this country are starting to embrace the idea of split tickets once again.” Reinisch said.
Mickey McElear, a history professor at the University of Connecticut, said voters who chose both Trump and the abortion rights ballot measure don't need the protections Harris promised if they support state-level protections. He said he may have made a decision.
McElear argued that racism and sexism were also major factors against Harris, an idea that some Democrats have also raised as they seek answers to the Election Day results. White women who support President Trump may “think they are protected” from problems that other lower-class women felt would be exacerbated by Trump's re-election.
Women were more likely than men to say that electing the first female president was a factor in their vote. According to AP VoteCast, But a remarkable four in ten women say it's not a factor.
“I think people generally assume that if women vote, there will be more support from women,” said Kelly Dittmar, research director and scholar at the Center for American Women's Politics. “And I think we just have to accept that women don't vote for women. They don't vote along gender lines.”
Meanwhile, the Harris campaign also struggled to win over male voters, despite efforts to strengthen its appeal to its base and tone down Trump's message of masculinity.
Harris had an overall lead among young voters, but young men had been drifting away from the Democratic Party for years as young women increasingly identified as liberal.
In 2016, Trump won by an 11-point margin over men, Edison said, and in 2020, President Biden narrowed that gap to single digits. This cycle NBC News Exit Poll Trump has widened his lead with male voters to 13 points, suggesting he has won a majority of white and Latino men. He also won about half of young male voters, compared to less than four in 10 women in his age group.
Dittmar noted that Harris' poor performance among women in the latest defection data is part of a broader decline in Democratic performance overall.
“The data is telling us something. I'm not saying we should run away from race and gender as issues, but I'm concerned that this is exactly the lesson Democratic strategists are taking from the data.” “We're doing it,” McElia said.
