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Mr. Sparkle

(3,111 posts)
Fri Nov 8, 2024, 10:58 AM Nov 8

Democrats had bet on women showing up in force. They didn't.

At least one thing was taken for granted before voting day - women across the US were going to turn out for Kamala Harris. Just as months of relentless polling showed Harris in a virtual tie with Donald Trump, many of those same surveys told the story of a yawning gender gap. It was a strategy Harris’s team was betting on, hoping that an over-performance among women could make up for losses elsewhere. It didn’t happen.

Across the country, the majority of women did cast their ballots for Harris, but not by the historic margins she needed. Instead, if early exit polls bear out, Harris’s advantage among women overall - around 10 points - actually fell four points short of Joe Biden’s in 2020. Democrats suffered a 10 point drop among Latino women, while failing to move the needle among non-college educated women at all, who again went for Trump 63-35, preliminary data suggests. The shortfall was not for lack of trying. Throughout her 15-week campaign, much of Harris’s messaging was aimed directly at women, most obviously with her emphasis on abortion.

On the trail, Harris made reproductive rights a cornerstone of her pitch. She repeatedly reminded voters that Trump had once bragged about his role in overturning Roe v Wade - a ruling that ended the nationwide right to an abortion. “I will fight to restore what Donald Trump and his hand-selected Supreme Court justice took away from the women of America,” Harris said at her closing address in DC last week. Her most powerful advertisements featured women who had suffered under state abortion bans - deemed “Trump abortion bans” by Harris - including those who said they were denied care for miscarriages.

The strategy, it seemed, was to harness the same enthusiasm for abortion access that drove Democrats’ unexpected success in the 2022 midterms. Abortion rights remain broadly popular - this Gallup poll in May suggested only one in 10 Americans thought it should be banned. And even these election results seemed to underline that. Eight out of the 10 states where abortion was on the ballot voted in favour of abortion rights.
But that support did not translate into support for Harris.

more ... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3e8z53qyd5o

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hlthe2b

(106,328 posts)
2. Gawd, I cannot understand this at all. Screw your religion if the abortion issue kept you home or made you vote Trump.
Fri Nov 8, 2024, 11:04 AM
Nov 8

He is content to let us all languish and die in a pool of blood as long as it keeps anti-choice factions on his side. And even if you are not in that susceptible group, your cervical cancer may well not be caught early enough to treat given the rightful emigration of qualified non-insane OB/GYNs from regressive antiabortion states.

That said, this needs more exploration and analysis. How could the existential risks--especially to women--not have gotten through?

CousinIT

(10,180 posts)
3. College educated women should know better. It does show that..
Fri Nov 8, 2024, 11:07 AM
Nov 8

...not only are most men misogynistic and won't vote for a woman, but many women are, too. They have no self-respect at all and are somehow astoundingly ignorant.

Intractable

(541 posts)
4. At a place where I formerly lived, the property manager was a 50-ish woman.
Fri Nov 8, 2024, 05:30 PM
Nov 8

She was in charge. She was highly competent. She got things done. She could boss people around when necessary.

I started going with a woman. She and the property manager became great friends. We all became good friends.

So, back in 2016, the prop manager said she would not vote for a woman for president. She said, "They can't be priests and they can't be president."

Ironically, I thought that she, herself, would be a great leader (except for her own misogyny).

displacedvermoter

(3,023 posts)
6. Until new federal law overrides it,
Sat Nov 9, 2024, 03:31 PM
Nov 9

entirely likely now that Trump is going to be president, and folks like Hawley got returned to the Senate, by these apparently clueless red we can be Missouri voters.

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