When you’re a star, Donald Trump has said more than once, women will let you do whatever you want to them. As president, that meant putting three right-wing justices on the Supreme Court and stripping half the country of a constitutional right, enabling people like him — their self-proclaimed “protector” — to have the final word on what any woman does with her body.
“I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not,” the former president asserted at a campaign stop on Wednesday. “I am going to protect them.”
Women, it turns out, do not care for this — a large majority of them, at least. While millions will still vote for the Republican candidate, perhaps hating immigrants more than they love reproductive rights, the only certainty at this point is that many millions more will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. In the latest ABC News/Ipsos national poll, the Democrat enjoyed a 14% advantage with women over Trump; among women with a college degree, that number rose to 23%; among women voters under 40, it rocketed to 34%.
According to the Brookings Institution, Harris’ strength among women angered by the 2022 Dobbs decision could explain why Democrats, for the first time in forever, are polling better with older voters than Republicans. The think tank’s Michael Hais and Morley Winograd noted that, per the ABC News/Ipsos survey, there has been a 10-point swing to Harris among voters over the age of 65 compared to 2020.
“Some observers think this shift is driven by the ‘revenge of Boomer feminists’ among the women of that famous generation, all of whom are now over 65 but who cut their political teeth in the battle for equality when they were much younger,” Hais and Winograd wrote. Younger voters may be angry over losing a right they had never lived without, but older people have seen hard-fought progress rolled back. They are also the most reliable group of voters — and they tend to vote early.
In battleground states, that appears to be exactly what’s happening. According to an analysis of early-voting tallies by Politico, women account for 55% of all ballots cast thus far in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
That, in turn, is causing some MAGA commentators to break from their usual posture of feigned confidence to outright panic.
“Early vote has been disproportionately female,” Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA and helping to lead the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort, posted on social media. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.” (Kirk, seeking to motivate these voters, offered Orwellian misogyny: “If you want a vision of the future if you don’t vote, imagine Kamala’s voice cackling, forever.”)
The line that female voters may cost Trump another term could just be a scare tactic intended to motivate other men who hate women. Democrats, after all, often raise money and motivate their own voters by warning that an election is about to be lost.
But speaking with former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, Kirk seemed genuinely upset that women could be voting for Harris in massive numbers — and lying to their controlling husbands about it.
“It is so repulsive. It is so disastrous. It is the embodiment of the downfall of the American family. I think it’s so gross. I think it’s just so nauseating,” Kirk said, set off by a new ad, produced by a liberal Christian organization, that features Julia Roberts reminding women that how one votes need not be shared with any emotionally-stunted man who would throw a fit. (“That’s the same thing as having an affair,” Fox News’ Jesse Watters commented on the ad. “That violates the sanctity of our marriage.”)
The over-the-top response to the ad — simply reminding people that, in a democracy, votes are secret — could be read as something other than total confidence. And while early voting numbers should not be conflated with final tallies, there is data to support GOP concern.
In Pennsylvania, more than 1.6 million ballots have already been cast, according to data collected by NBC News. In a state with more than 8.8 million registered voters, that’s not enough to have decided the election already. However, it does indicate an early but wide gap when it comes to gender: So far, 56% of mail-in ballots cast have come from women, a 13% advantage over men.
That gap is about the same as was seen in 2020. In 2024, though, Republicans have been strongly encouraging their supporters to vote early, a campaign that has closed the disparity between parties: In the last presidential election, less than a quarter of mail-in votes came from Republicans, compared to roughly a third today.
Democrats hope that the fact the same gender disparity remains, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, is a sign of dissent among Republican women and others who may have backed former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley in the GOP primary (157,000 Pennsylvanians did so, six weeks after she had dropped out).
Mike Cernovich, a pro-Trump influencer, is openly freaking out.
“Male turnout in Pennsylvania for Trump has been a disaster,” Cernovich wrote on social media. “Unless this changes, Kamala Harris takes PA and it’s over.”
