Republicans are alarmed that former President Trump’s support among women is deteriorating in the polls and that his efforts to stop the bleeding don’t appear to be working.
While Republicans are no strangers to the gender gap between the parties in presidential elections, they now face a “chasm” between male and female voters.
Republican pollster Whit Ayres says “it’s going to be a challenge” for Trump to chip away at Vice President Harris’s big lead among women.
“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,” he warned.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll published Sunday showed Harris with a huge lead over Trump among women, 54 percent to 41 percent, while Trump enjoyed a more modest 51 percent to 46 percent lead over Harris among men.
Especially concerning for Republicans, the ABC/Ipsos poll showed Harris’s standing among women had jumped significantly compared to before the Democratic convention in Chicago, when she led Trump by only 6 points among women.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll published Thursday also showed Harris with a 13-point lead among women, 49 percent to 36 percent, and Trump with a smaller lead among men voters.
Both polls showed Harris with a 4-percentage point overall lead nationwide.
Trump has tried to win over college-educated and suburban women by moderating his position on abortion and backing free in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments.
But those proposals are meeting a backlash from anti-abortion conservatives, and GOP strategists are skeptical about how much they will influence women who have already moved away from Trump.
One senior Senate Republican aide said that “when [President] Biden was still in the race,” Trump’s team “felt like they didn’t need suburban women to win.” But the political calculus has now changed dramatically after Harris replaced him as the Democratic nominee.
“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,” the source warned, expressing skepticism that Trump will “moderate his behavior” in a way to be more appealing to women.
Trump’s problems with women are apparent even in the Senate GOP conference, where two of the Senate’s most prominent women, Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), say they won’t vote for Trump. Both will be key swing votes in the next Congress if Republicans win back control of the upper chamber.
Trump last week criticized Florida’s six-week abortion ban for being too strict but quickly backed off that position after receiving sharp criticism from members of his base. He backtracked by expressing opposition to a Florida statewide ballot initiative to make abortion legal up until the moment of fetal viability.
He took another stab at making amends with women by expressing support for providing greater access to IVF treatments paid for by the federal government or insurance companies.
That drew pushback from one of his allies on Capitol Hill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who warned that asking insurance companies to pay for free treatments would create a bad precedent.
Ayres noted Trump and other Republican candidates have maintained their advantage among male voters.
But the prominence of abortion rights and women’s access to health care treatments such as IVF appears to be energizing women in a way that threatens to eclipse the traditional GOP advantage with men.
Ayres said Trump clearly is trying to make up ground with women and predicted “we’ll find out whether it’s effective when we see the votes.”
“Donald Trump recognizes very astutely the power of the abortion issue in the post-Dobbs world,” he said, referring to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
Ayres, the GOP pollster, said Harris’s growing lead among women is a reflection of the impact of Trump’s past statements that have alienated women and the “continual effect of the prominence of the abortion issue.”
Some Republican strategists are urging Trump to downplay or sidestep the discussion about abortion rights, which divides his party, and focus on issues important to women where Republicans have a built-in advantage over Democrats, namely the economy and inflation.
Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist and former Senate leadership aide, said Trump should “start talking about issues that matter to female voters such as pocketbook issues that affect family.”
He said “talking about the prices of groceries, energy and what are his plans” to lower costs would shift the race onto more favorable ground.
The Trump campaign appears to have started doing that in recent days.
“Kamala Harris’s dangerously liberal policies have left women worse off financially and far less safe than we were four years ago under President Trump. Kamalanomics has increased the cost of groceries, gas, baby formula, mortgages and rent, making life unaffordable for working moms and families,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary.
The ABC/Ipsos polls showing Harris with a 13-point lead over Trump among women also showed that Americans continue to trust Trump more on the economy and inflation.
Trump has an 8-point lead over Harris on those two issues — as well as a 9-point lead on the issue of immigration and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the survey.
The Trump campaign on Tuesday also hit Harris’s record on immigration and border security as vice president.
“As Border Czar, Kamala Harris opened the southern border to illegal criminals who have brutally raped, murdered, and assaulted innocent women across the country. Women deserve a President who will secure our nation’s borders, remove violent criminals from our neighborhoods, and build an economy that helps our families thrive – and that’s exactly what President Trump will do,” Leavitt said.
On the issue of abortion rights, Bonjean said “the train has already left the station because he’s talked about [and] really discussed it widely.”
“The focus on IVF was helpful but the vacillation in a matter of days” on the subject of Florida’s abortion ban “isn’t helping,” he said.
Instead, he said Trump can “gain some of that ground back” with women if he talks about bread-and-butter economic issues that resonate with them.
“Every single vote matters, if he’s affecting those margins in a negative way, it can have an impact,” he added, advising Trump to steer clear of divisive topics that tend to alienate women, such as some of his personal attacks on Harris that appear to have backfired.
Trump came under strong criticism from members of his party by questioning Harris’s identity as a Black woman and criticizing her intelligence in such a heavy-handed way that he’s been criticized for launching sexist jabs.
Brandon Scholz, a Republican strategist based in Wisconsin, a key battleground state, called abortion a “top-five issue” in his home state.
He said how the gender gap will affect the presidential race in Wisconsin will depend a lot on which group of voters is most energized.
“Is there an enthusiasm gap? That’s what I’d look for next,” he said. “I’ve seen the gender gap in a bunch of polls. I was surprised it was as big it was.
“I don’t know what’s out there that would make it tighten up,” he said.
Scholz said Trump’s problems with women stretch all the way back to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
“Four and eight years ago, Trump said a number of things that really pushed some of the suburban women — the soccer mom types, Republican women — out and I don’t think they voted four years ago for him,” he said.
Updated at 7:10 a.m. EDT