Dem
49
GOP
51
We have a bunch more polling-themed items we want to get to, but boy howdy, do they take a long time to compile and write. So today, in view of the time crunch, we're going to do something that we would say is polling-adjacent.
For at least a couple of months, there has been much chatter about the possibility of women voters who publicly say they are going to vote for Donald Trump, so as to keep their husbands happy, but who really plan to vote for Kamala Harris. Is this because of abortion policy, or is it because Harris is a woman? We would tend to assume the former, and yet there was little talk of this phenomenon while Joe Biden was the Democratic candidate. And, in theory, he would have been as much a protector of abortion as Kamala Harris promises to be. So maybe it is because she's a woman.
Whatever the case may be, we've been wondering about this storyline, and whether or not there might be a real phenomenon here. On one hand, it certainly seems plausible that women in "traditional" households might talk one way, and vote another, so as to keep the peace. On the other hand, it could also be a Democratic pipe dream, not unlike the quadrennial hopes that this is gonna be the year that Texas goes blue.
We tried to think of a way that we might somehow squeeze some information out of the available numbers, but we just couldn't come up with one. However, something's happened in the last day or two that makes us think the phenomenon might just be for real. It's still a gut-feel kind of thing, but at least one backed with some evidence (albeit indirect evidence).
Here's what happened. The actress Julia Roberts recorded a pro-Harris commercial:
It is only 30 seconds, but if you don't care to watch, the basic plotline is that a Trumpy-looking woman arrives at her polling place, accompanied by her even-more-Trumpy-looking husband. He tells her to make sure to vote correctly, she goes to the voting booth and votes for Harris, and then says "yes" when her husband asks if she made "the right choice." Roberts' voiceover makes clear to (women) viewers that their choices are private, and they don't need to tell the truth about how they voted to their husbands.
Now, perhaps we are Pollyannas or something, but if someone implied that one of us had demanded that our significant other vote as we ordered them to vote, our response would be: "What? That would not happen. How dare you even suggest such a thing." Compare that to the angry responses from many, many Republicans yesterday. Here, for example, is Charlie Kirk:
I think it's so gross. I think it's so nauseating where this wife is wearing the American hat, she's coming in with her sweet husband who probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go you know and have a nice life and provide to the family, and then she lies to him saying, "Oh, yeah, I'm gonna vote for Trump," and then she votes for Kamala Harris as her little secret in the voting booth.
Or, here is Newt Gingrich:
And so, for them to tell people to lie is just one further example of the depth of their corruption. I mean, how do you run a country where you're walking around saying, "Wives should lie to their husbands, husbands should lie to their wives"? I mean, what kind of a totally amoral, corrupt, sick system have the Democrats developed?... Instead of having a dignity and patriotism and a sense of morality, these are really sick people.
Newt Gingrich, paragon of moral virtue.
Maybe we're reading too much into this, but the difference between our instinctive response and these remarks was striking to us. Instead of "How dare you suggest we would do something like that," it is "How dare you suggest that women mislead their patriotic, caring, sweet husbands who work so hard to put food on the table." If anything could convince us that the "shy Harris voter" dynamic is real, short of actual numbers, then this attitude, expressed so unhesitatingly by so many Republicans, is it. (Z)