Donald Trump’s Women Problem Has Gotten Worse

Donald Trump’s problem with winning over women voters appears to have gotten worse now that Kamala Harris is likely to be the Democratic candidate for president, new polling suggests.

The former president has previously struggled to gain the favor of female voters, gaining only 39 percent of women’s votes in 2016, and 44 percent in 2020. He lost the women’s vote by 15 points to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and by 11 points in 2020 to Joe Biden.

A new poll shows that Trump’s support among female voters is declining. The latest poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena between July 22 and 24, shows that Harris has a 15 point lead over Trump amongst women, with 55 percent of female voters supporting Harris compared to Trump’s 40 percent. The poll surveyed 1,142 registered voters and had a margin of error of 3.3 percent.

Harris’ lead is up from Biden’s 8 point lead in a previous poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena between June 28 and July 2, when 51 percent of women said they would support Biden compared to Trump’s 43 percent. The poll surveyed 1,532 likely voters and had a margin of error of 2.8 percent.

Newsweek has contacted the Trump campaign for comment via email.

Harris has consistently supported abortion rights throughout her career, an issue that could play a large role in the election following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. A poll released in May by the Pew Research Center, which surveyed 8,709 adults, found that most residents in top swing states supported abortion rights.

In contrast, while Trump has not opposed abortion rights outright, he has previously said it should be up to states to enact their own laws on the issue. He played a key role in the overturning of Roe v. Wade after appointing three conservative judges to the High Court during his term. The issue was considered central to Democratic victories in the 2022 midterm elections.

Trump has faced accusations of sexual assault by more than a dozen women, which he has persistently denied. He once was heard on an infamous Access Hollywood tape boasting of grabbing women “by the p***y,” which he dismissed as “locker room talk.”

With Harris likely to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, women’s rights issues may take center stage in this election, Amy Dacey, executive director of the Sine Institute for Policy & Politics at American University in Washington, D.C., told Newsweek.

“Issues like abortion, and IVF, and contraception, women’s health are all very much at the forefront,” she said.

“I think women will have a big influence on this election.”

Dacey added that with the women vote potentially playing a pivotal role in this election, Trump and his running mate, Republican Ohio Senator JD Vance, are going to have to make a significant effort to court that portion of the electorate in order to win in November.

“So, this is something that either the Trump-Vance ticket is going to have to try and cut into those margins and speak to women and say that they share their interests,” she said.

Jonathan Parker, a senior lecturer in U.S. Politics from Keele University in the U.K. agreed, telling Newsweek that the Harris campaign sees the potential for women to swing the election “and will be trying to make abortion a key policy issue of the election and goad Trump into looking intemperate and extreme,” possibly impacting his share of the female vote.

Trump’s past record with women’s rights issues might not be the only thing that could impact his ability to win over female voters.

Having Vance on the ticket could also hurt Trump’s hopes to appeal to women voters, experts told Newsweek.

Carrie Baker, a professor of women, gender and sexuality at Smith College, Massachusetts, told Newsweek that “Vance’s extreme views on reproductive rights will hurt Trump with women voters.”

Parker added that there will be “little electoral advantage” to picking Vance for Trump as he faces the prospect of having to compete with Kamala Harris for the presidency, due to some of his views on issues important to women voters.

“JD Vance was a daring, potentially overconfident, pick,” he said.

He added that the “cautious move” would have been to pick a female nominee for the vice president position in order to appeal to women, who make up 51 percent of the electorate in the U.S.

Newsweek has contacted representatives of Vance via email for comment.

Vance has been a vocal opponent of abortion rights, and has also displayed more traditional views of a women’s role within and beyond the household, according to Elisabeth Clemens, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago.

“JD Vance already serves as an avatar of a much more traditional model of the family and of women’s roles within and beyond the household,” she told Newsweek.

In a 2021 interview, Vance argued that a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest should not be viewed as “inconvenient.”

“My view on this has been very clear and I think the question betrays a certain presumption that is wrong. It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society. The question really, to me, is about the baby,” he said.

He also previously implied that women trapped in abusive marriages should remain married for the sake of the kids, adding that ending marriages that were “maybe even violent” would be selfish. “This is one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace,” he said in 2022 in footage published by Vice News. “Making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear.”

Meanwhile, Vance angered child-free women this week when an interview from 2021 resurfaced in which he told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the country was run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too,” going on to name drop Harris.

Vance has since attempted to backtrack on his comments, telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity in a recent interview that the Democrats were “twisting” his words on abortion and that his comments on divorce had been misreported.

“Both me and my mom actually were victims of domestic violence. So, to say, ‘Vance has supported women staying in violent marriages,’ I think it’s shameful for them to take a guy with my history and my background and say that that’s what I believe. It’s not what I believe. It’s not what I said,” he said.

He also said during a campaign debate in 2022 that he has “always believed in reasonable exceptions” for abortion, while his aunt, Lori Meibers, defended him.

“Women have been forefront throughout JD’s life. He was raised without a father figure. My mother, Bonnie Vance—or Mamaw, as well know her—his sister, Lindsay and myself all coalesced around him to raise him ourselves. My own daughters have chosen significant others that resemble the man JD is, and that brings me incredible joy to know that he has had such a lasting impact on them. It’s disgusting that the Democrats and media are attacking him in this way,” she said.

Writing in an op-ed in The Columbus Dispatch last week, columnist Jordan Barkin wrote that Vance’s controversial views won’t appeal to women or swing voters and, in turn, won’t help Trump’s chances of becoming president again.

“Women are not a focus of the Ohio senator,” he wrote, adding that “many swing voters” disagree with his stance on abortion.

However, Republican Senator Susan Collins disagreed that Vance won’t help Trump at the polls.

“JD Vance will help President Trump appeal to a lot of younger voters, people from military families, working families. And [he] brings some vibrancy to the ticket,” she said. She did not mention female voters.

For Parker, Trump and Vance are not the only people who will face challenges with female voters during this election.

He told Newsweek that Harris will face the challenge of convincing moderate Republican women who are sympathetic toward women’s rights issues to vote for her rather than to stay home, like they did in 2020.

“Harris is a much better draw for Democratic women. The question is whether she can entice Republican women to switch or stay at home, which is what happened in 2020. That will depend upon her crafting a message and image that is not threatening to moderate Republicans,” he told Newsweek.

“The Trump campaign has already begun the negative messaging on her to define her image before she even begins. This will be the key battle of the campaign: can Harris present a compelling, convincing alternative to Donald Trump before he defines her as a far left, woke, California Democrat.

“She has very little time to do that and must sort out these key strategic decisions fast without her own campaign in place, so it is a difficult challenge.”

Update 07/26/24, 07:37 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.