'Gender chasm': GOP panics over huge Harris lead among women as Trump chases 'bro vote'

04 September 2024

With just 62 days to go until Election Day, GOP analysts are in panic mode over Vice President Kamala Harris’s strong, double-digit lead among women, as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been unable to stop his “free fall” and some fear an impending “gender chasm.”

Harris’s lead among women has doubled since the Democratic National Convention last month, jumping from six points over Trump to 13, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll published this weekend, and a Reuters/Ipsos poll last week. The Washington Post’s Susan Page reports their new poll puts Harris at 21 points over Trump.

“The real challenge right now for Republicans is whether they can perform sufficiently well among men to overcome the deficit among women. Given the prominence of abortion in this year’s race and Trump’s past statements about women, the traditional gender gap could become a gender chasm,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres told The Hill.

A senior Senate Republican aide added, “I’m not sure I know what to tell Trump to do to stop that free fall. He seems to be throwing out ideas on IVF but it’s a pretty deep hole.”

Last week, Trump appeared to appropriate ideas from Vice President Harris’s economic policies and from congressional Democrats’ legislation to help pay for in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and to help parents of newborns pay for expenses.

Continuing his low campaign schedule from last month, Trump has skipped the traditional Labor Day campaign kickoff to the finish line, and is not slated to be campaigning until Saturday, although he will appear on Fox News for a town hall Wednesday night. Meanwhile, the Harris-Walz campaign on Tuesday began their Reproductive Freedom bus tour in the ex-president’s home state. They will travel from West Palm Beach and make 50 stops in battleground states across the country.

“The campaign said ‘reproductive rights storytellers’ will join campaign surrogates along the route to help emphasize the split screen on the issue between the Harris-Walz campaign and Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance,” ABC News reports.

E.W. Scripps reporter Forrest Saunders notes the bus made “at least one lap” around Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort.

Noting how Trump “spent the weekend walking back statements criticizing six-week abortion bans,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Tuesday, “Trump’s waffling stance on abortion is galvanizing Kamala Harris’ ‘reproductive freedom’ bus tour.”

Meanwhile, the gender gap appears to be widest among younger voters.

“It’s hard to keep up with all the polls right now, but this stands out from a recent NYT/Siena College poll: Among swing state women under the age of 45 – abortion rights has now overtaken the economy as their top voting issue,” notes MSNBC anchor Ana Cabrera, pointing to this New York Times article.

“It’s the most startling thing I’ve seen in this year’s presidential campaign,” writes Steven Greenhouse in an opinion piece at The Guardian on Tuesday, “the astoundingly large gap between how young men and young women plan to vote this November. Among women under age 30, an overwhelming 67% plan to vote for Kamala Harris, while just 29% say they’ll back Donald Trump. But among young men, a majority – 53% – plan to vote for Trump, while 40% say they’ll support Harris, according to a New York Times/Sienna College poll. That’s an astonishing 51-percentage-point gender gap.”

“Trump isn’t an icon of positive masculinity,” Greenhouse adds, warning: “He also did very little for young men during his four years as president.”

On Friday, The New York Times reported, “a constellation of YouTubers, pranksters and streamers who influence young men is helping Donald Trump win the bro vote.”

The “Trump campaign has been aggressively courting what might be called the bro vote, the frat-boy flank. It’s a slice of 18-to-29-year-olds that has long been regarded as unreliable and unreachable, but that Republicans believe may just swing the election this year.”

“To find them, Mr. Trump and his allies have been exploring deep into the universe — a manoverse — of social media stars with male-centric audiences: the Nelk Boys, Mr. White and U.F.C., Dave Portnoy and his Barstool Sports media network, YouTubers like Jake and Logan Paul, podcasters like Theo Von and streamers like Adin Ross.”

Democratic strategist and pollster Matt McDermott on Wednesday warned: “While polls may seem volatile, they are actually painting a very clear picture: seven states in this country — PA, MI, WI, NC, GA, AZ, and NV — will each be decided by a few thousand votes, out of millions of votes cast.”

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