With the 2024 election looming, Republicans are doing an end run around their connection to former President Donald Trump in hopes of winning over women voters. The party is well aware of Trump’s divisive nature and is instead trying to focus on issues that resonate more widely with women, rather than celebrating his legacy.
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Don’t Mention Trump: How Republicans Are Trying to Win Over Women Voters
A central element of their agenda is economic issues. The Republicans are outlining proposals on jobs, economic growth, and helping parents afford more childcare to address important areas affecting women directly. They also seek healthcare reforms while shelving abortion law debates as currently defined.
The second focal point—the Republicans focus strongly on education, with candidates favoring school choice and additional parental rights, seeking to reach women who care deeply about their children’s education. In addition, to appeal better to a broad coalition, the party has also promoted a more diverse slate of candidates, or at least visible women and minorities.
By emphasizing practical concerns and involving a greater variety of voices, Republicans are hoping to bolster their appeal to women voters and add more layers to their base as the election draws near.
Spouting Defense For an Aggressive Candidate
Trump campaign communications director Karoline Leavitt attacked Kamala Harris, saying her “recklessly progressive policies” have made women worse off economically and less safe than they were under Trump. However, some political analysts have indicated that Trump’s campaign is significantly more male-focused. Republican pollster Christine Matthews said that Trump’s strategy is based on energizing the “MAGA” base, non-college-educated men—both Hispanic and white—and desperately trying to cut the gender gap.
Trump’s campaign has played to a “bro culture,” which is masculine and implies tough versus weak. This resonates with many men, although not unaffiliated voters. His selection of JD Vance as a running mate, which he said was to help take some of these guys to the polls, may have lost him some good women voters. Vance described Democratic women voters as “childless cat ladies,” among other things—enough to outrage swing women voters. Despite these challenges, Trump retains strong support among loyal female backers like Dixie, a 59-year-old Republican from Door County.
‘Staying the Hell Away’ From Abortion
Another massive issue for women voters that is pressed by Republicans in swing states relates to their reproductive rights. Since the SC got rid of the case of Roe v. Wade in the year 2022, Democrats have used abortion rights as a galvanizing force, with Vice President Harris at the helm. Voters in several states, including some that had been lockstep Republican, approved measures protecting abortion rights. Don’t Mention Trump: How Republicans Are Trying to Win Over Women Voters.
Republicans have had trouble coalescing behind a position on reproductive rights. While Trump has long said the issue falls to individual states and won’t endorse a nationwide abortion ban supported by many of the party’s lawmakers, he also muddied the waters this week with unclear comments about whether he’d support a Florida referendum protecting abortion rights, drawing criticism from anti-abortion conservatives. Meanwhile, Trump, to the surprise of most, pledged to pay for fertility treatments such as IVF, which Democrats fear could be in jeopardy under draconian new abortion restrictions.
Dancing with Donald?
Political analysts argue that the landscape has shifted since Trump first ran for president. Some women voters in 2016 were willing to pass over concerns about Trump, believing he would act differently in office. That 2016 “Let Trump be Trump” mindset no longer works, says Betsy Fischer Martin of the Women & Politics Institute.
During the 2018 midterms, suburban and college-educated women largely turned away from Trump and helped fuel the Democratic “blue wave.” In 2022, reproductive rights were key to Democrats outperforming expectations, raising Republican fears that the issue could again mobilize women voters in 2024.
Experts believe that if Trump focuses on the suburban women, he will begin to walk away from the complaints about his personality and rhetoric if he articulates to them. He could remind them that although they don’t like him personally, there is perhaps an important grocery bill to sort out.
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