Can the Sisterhood Save Democracy?

The gender gap shows a Harris victory will depend on women.

People attend a rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Building on April 08, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WITH THREE WEEKS LEFT UNTIL ELECTION DAY, Donald Trump’s attempt to convince Americans that “migrants” have invaded the country and are “occupying” portions of it, is working. He has narrowed the race as polls show him making gains with Latino and African American men.

Trump believes his racist and xenophobic pitch can peel off enough suburban moms as well, because he knows a majority of voters now favor his mass deportation plans—a 20 percentage point increase in just eight Trumpified years, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll.

If enough undecided women are convinced by Trump’s campaign of fear, he will win. His advantage in the Electoral College likely makes the election his to lose.

It will be a cruel irony if that ends up being the case. Because while Trump’s history of misogyny and sexual assault is well established, he has, to this point, chosen to alienate women far more this election—the first presidential election since the overturning of Roe v. Wade—than in 2016 and 2020.

Trump chose JD Vance as his running mate. The senator was tasked with targeting male voters, but he came with his own history of contempt for women without children. Trump also denigrates Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly at his rallies as “dumb,” “mentally disabled” and “low IQ.” He reportedly called her “retarded” at a dinner with top donors. When Harris recently appeared on The View, a show mostly watched by women, Trump called her a “dummy” and the hosts “degenerates” and “dumb women.”

This isn’t confusing. Trump believes women are intellectually inferior—if not to all men, then at least to him.

Trump has vacillated on abortion, attempting to buffer himself from the backlash of the Dobbs ruling that his court nominees decided, while also expressing pride in the court for overturning Roe.

His response to his awful standing with women had been to condescend to them. Recently, he said that his election would make them “confident and free,” declaring: “I want to be your protector.” He added that in his second term, “you will no longer be thinking about abortion.”

Meanwhile Trump and Vance have invested time in niche media spaces with largely young and male audiences—and it has paid dividends. More male voters of all ages and races have warmed to Trump since he tried to steal an election and incited an insurrection so he could remain in power illegally.

These new male converts are unmoved by Trump’s criminal convictions, his betrayal of his oath and his country, his pathological lying or authoritarianism.

But, so far at least, a majority of female voters aren’t buying it.

A Pew Research Center poll of registered voters from last week found Harris supported by 52 percent of females and 43 percent of males while Trump had the support of 51 percent of males and 43 percent of females. Other polls this fall have shown a larger gap.

In every presidential election since 1980, women have voted at higher rates than men, and that gap has grown larger with each election. There are more women than men, particularly among the elderly. In 2020, women made up more of the electorate in the six of the seven current battleground states. The exception was Wisconsin, where their participation was evenly matched. Roughly 10 million more women have been registered to vote in recent cycles, except for 2022, when that gap narrowed to 7.4 million.

But the gender gap in candidate preference won’t matter unless it shows up in turnout as well.

A new report from the Brookings Institution found that if the same ratio of male-to-female voting occurs in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada as it did in 2020, Harris could win all four. Brookings also found that in the swing states of Arizona and Georgia, the gender gap in turnout would not be large enough to tip the states to Harris. Then again, women there can overperform current polling.

The good news for Harris is that female voters are energized. Her entrance into the race drove up motivation among them. An October poll from KFF, a nonpartisan news service on national health issues, found a 20 percent point increase in women who said they were motivated to vote compared to June. Among Democratic women, 92 percent trust Harris to protect the interests of women while only 52 percent of Republican women voters say they trust Trump to do the same. 

Since Harris became the Democratic candidate, abortion has become the most important issue for voters under age 30, topping inflation, according to the KFF survey. The same survey found that seven in ten women support a national right to abortion and “most women across party lines, including about nine in ten Democratic women (94%) and three in four Republican women, say VP Harris is likely to sign a law restoring Roe v. Wade, protecting nationwide access to abortion, if she is elected and if such a law is passed by Congress.”

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HARRIS IS COURTING NEVER TRUMP Republicans with surrogates like former Rep. Liz Cheney, and it’s hard to imagine there won’t be GOP women defecting over abortion in addition to January 6th.

While Harris’s lead with young women is higher than Trump’s lead with young men, her campaign is scrambling to staunch the bleeding with black and Latino men who used to vote for Democrats.

It’s likely far too late.

Gov. Tim Walz racing around to football games and bumbling his way through a pheasant hunt isn’t going to move the needle—and neither are Hombres for Harris or White Dudes for Harris. Men who oppose Trump will either be motivated enough by fear of a second Trump term to vote for Harris or they won’t.

While many men may agree with Democrats on issues like abortion or climate change or gun violence, they also prioritize the issue of the economy and are drawn to Trump in a post–#MeToo debate over masculinity, in which four in ten young men say women’s gains have come at their expense.

As one unnamed donor told the Hill, “Men are gone, at least for this cycle.”

With these new divisions, with Trump in close contention, and with history as our guide, it remains hard to believe this electorate will choose a woman for president. And yet, the motivation and the math are there for Harris to win the White House.

It was a woman who convinced President Joe Biden to leave a race he would lose badly. Democracy was facing a wipeout before Nancy Pelosi stepped up.

And now, women across the country can turn out in enough numbers to ensure we’re not going back.

In three weeks, America is going to tell us who she is. If our democracy prevails, and Trump is rejected once more, it will be women whom we will thank.