Winning the votes of women – particularly suburban women — will be a big challenge for President Trump in November, and he knows it.
The president retweeted a column from The New York Post on Thursday warning of changes former Vice President Joe Biden would supposedly make to local zoning laws if he defeats Trump in the presidential election.
Trump wrote: “The Suburban Housewives of America must read this article. Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream. I will preserve it, and make it even better!”
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Not exactly a subtle appeal by Trump, and a clear sign of desperation.
A Fox News poll released this week makes clear that Trump’s alarm is justified. The poll found that Trump leads Biden by 5 points among men. But Biden has a commanding lead of 19 points among women.
And Biden has a 22-point advantage over Trump among suburban women, according to a recent New York Times poll.
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Female support for Trump started eroding toward the end of the 2016 presidential election campaign when the “Access Hollywood” tape was released showing candidate Trump bragging in vulgar language about kissing women, trying to have sex with them, and grabbing them by their genitals.
“And when you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump boasted on the tape, recorded in 2005 when he apparently thought he was having a private conversation. “You can do anything.”
Many people thought the disclosure of these disgusting comments doomed Trump’s candidacy. Some Republicans even called on him to withdraw from the presidential race. But Trump apologized and went on to stun the political world by defeating Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College, although she received about 3 million more popular votes in the presidential race.
This COVID-19 crisis is hitting women especially hard.
Two years later in the 2018 midterm elections, female voters helped Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives from Republicans. And now Democrats hope women who have had enough of Trump and will send him into political retirement, expand the Democratic majority in the House, and give Democrats control of the Senate.
Clearly, one reason Biden promised to choose a female vice presidential running mate was his calculation that this would strengthen his already strong support among women voters.
All across the country, typically red states where Republicans were almost guaranteed to win in recent years – including Texas, Georgia and Arizona — are now being hotly contested by Democrats, thanks in large part to the strong support they are receiving from women.
And states that Trump narrowly lost in 2016 – like Minnesota — now appear to be highly unlikely to be flipped for him (a goal Trump set) in November. Women, particularly those living in suburbs, are making the difference for Democrats.
Although Hillary Clinton carried the overall female vote in 2016, Trump was competitive. He won 53 percent of the votes of white college-educated women and had a 27-point lead among non-college-educated women. That lead is now down to single digits according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll and a New York Times poll.
White college-educated suburban women are turning not just against Trump, but against Republican congressional candidates as well, according to polls. In 59 battleground House races, polls show women favoring Democrats by about 30 points over Republicans.
In fact, Biden seems to be on track to get more support from white college-educated suburban women than Obama (who got 46 percent in 2012) and Hillary Clinton (who got 51 percent in 2016).
President Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic is hurting him among both male and female voters. Only 43 percent of voters approve of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, according to the latest Fox News poll. That figure could go lower if the pandemic worsens and the number of deaths and hospitalizations continues rising.
This COVID-19 crisis is hitting women especially hard. In many families, women are primarily responsible for caring for sick family members. And with millions of children out of school, their mothers are more likely than their fathers to shoulder the brunt of child care responsibilities. Many women are also hard-hit by unemployment caused by business closures resulting from the pandemic.
Other issues are also of particular concern to women. For example, according to the Pew Research Center, only 29 percent of suburban women believe Trump has done a fair amount to advance women’s rights; 69 percent believe he hasn’t done much on this issue, despite him claiming that “nobody has more respect for women than I do.”
Hmm … cue the “Access Hollywood” tape.
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Whether as candidates or as voters, women are more involved politically now than at any time in our nation’s history. Remember, until 100 years ago women weren’t even allowed to vote, and America’s Declaration of Independence proclaimed “all men are created equal.”
This year more than 1 million women have donated money to a presidential candidate. So they’re not only a voting bloc to be reckoned with — they’re a strong financial force as well.
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Whether it be Trump’s insulting rhetoric, tweets viciously attacking specific women, lack of leadership with the coronavirus pandemic and in many other areas, or his inability to appeal to women, Joe Biden is the beneficiary of Trump’s many shortcomings.
If women turn out sufficiently to vote Biden and his female running mate into office in November, the phrase “sisterhood is powerful” will take on new meaning, and Trump’s boasts about his attractiveness to women will be shown to be — if I may borrow one of his favorite terms — fake news.
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