If gender politics is your jam, The New York Times absolutely nailed this headline last week: “Trump respects women, most men say.”
The story cited Siena polling for The New York Times showing that while a 54% majority of men say Trump respects women, either “a lot” or “some”—just 31% of women—hold the same view.
In the survey, President Joe Biden is winning women’s votes, but not by as much as one might hope given the lopsided result of the “respect” question.
Biden had a 16-point lead among women, with 53% to 37%, but the advantage was more than offset by Donald Trump’s 20-point lead among men, 57% to 37%.
Biden’s support among women is good, but it’s not yet where it needs to be, according to veteran Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.
“The formula for any Democrat in a close race is to win women by more than they lose men, and frankly, right now we’re behind,” said Lake, who worked for Biden’s 2020 campaign. “Having women become as intensely anti-Trump as men are pro-Trump is really, really important.”
To that end, the Biden campaign has seized on abortion, hammering Trump’s culpability in overturning Roe v. Wade and the resulting patchwork of extreme abortion bans blanketing the country. “Trump did this” has become the Biden campaign’s mantra for pinning every horrific development arising from women’s loss of bodily autonomy in GOP-led states.
Centering abortion as a means to bringing more women into the fold makes sense, and it cuts across varying demographics of women. A Wall Street Journal poll of seven battleground states earlier this month found abortion to be the singularly most motivating issue among suburban women, with 39% viewing it as a make-or-break issue for their vote. Nearly three-quarters of suburban women in these states say abortion should be legal all or most of the time.
In 2020, Biden beat Trump among suburban women by 19 points, according to the AP VoteCast surveyon par with Biden’s 17-point advantage in the Journal’s poll.
A Harvard poll earlier this month found that 18- to -29-year-old Democratic voters view “women’s reproductive rights” as their No. 1 issue. Biden won young voters in 2020 by 24 points, but the Harvard poll showed him falling short of that mark by a handful of points among likely youth voters and roughly 10 points short among registered voters.
So yes, absolutely, the Biden campaign should keep hammering abortion. It also needs women in blue states to view a national abortion ban as a legitimate threat.
But if Biden can dial up women’s rejection of Trump’s policies to a more generalized repulsion of Trump’s treatment of women, that could help Biden lock in a few more women voters.
Take registered Republican Riley Glissendorf, a 21-year-old who told the Times that she would be voting for Biden partially due to Trump’s role in overturning Roe. But it was more than that for Glissendorf, who also cited Trump’s “disrespectful, demeaning, unkind” posture toward women.
“First and foremost, I’m a woman. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for anyone who not only doesn’t respect me politically, but doesn’t respect me as a person,” she said.
In other words, Glissendorf’s aversion to Trump wasn’t just a matter of policy, but a fundamental character flaw that makes him a deal breaker from the get-go.
What Biden wants and needs to win this election is for voters to ask: Who will fight for me? For example, the Biden campaign is working to plant that question among working and middle class voters with his Scranton vs. Mar-a-Lago framing.
And with its emphasis on abortion, the campaign is working to get women asking the same question. But if Biden could get women to more holistically view him as fighting for them, that would be more powerful than the single issue of abortion.
And part of getting women to view Biden in that frame starts with making Trump a lowly being who doesn’t have an ounce of respect for women—because you simply cannot advocate for someone you don’t respect.
So when a meager 31% of women say Trump has either “a lot” or “some” respect for women, that suggests that there’s an opening to tip those voters from “Trump’s bad on abortion” to “Trump’s just bad for me.”
As the Times noted, there’s plenty of fodder for the Biden campaign to work with, including Trump being found liable of sexual assaulting E Jean Carroll, his infamous “grab ’em by the pussy” remarks, his current trial for covering up hush-money payments to an adult film star, and even his endless bragging about terminating Roe v. Wade.
Indeed, given all of Trump’s blathering on about abortion, the right framing of that dynamic itself could be too much for women—even those who aren’t super excited about voting for Biden.
Such as, for example, when Trump says the GOP’s life-threatening abortion bans are “really working out well for people” and that “they’re very very happy.”
After all, there’s nothing better than having a clueless man tell you how you feel.
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