Dem
50
GOP
50
In September, Donald Trump told women: "I will be your protector." This didn't go over so well with the ladies. Quite a few feel they do not need to be protected by a man, especially not this man. Younger women, college-educated women and single women, in particular, tend to chafe at the idea of their requiring a man to protect them, especially a man who has been found liable in court for committing sexual assault against one woman and has been accused of it by many other women.
It's not that women lack anxiety. Many of them are anxious about many things—their lives and their position in society, for example. But what they are worried about is not what Trump wants them to be worried about. He wants them to be scared of criminal immigrants. Instead they are scared that their rights to abortion, IVF, and contraception may be taken from them by Trump and the Republicans. He dismisses these fears as unrealistic and wants them to be afraid of what he tells them to be afraid of. Many women see this as paternalistic and patronizing.
At his convention, Trump surrounded himself with hypermasculine people like pro wrestler Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, who has been filmed hitting his wife. Many women see Trump as trying to protect them by restoring the patriarchy in its full 1950s glory and moving gender roles back 75 years. Back in the 1950s, one of the most popular TV shows was Father Knows Best, in which a kindly father faced problems in his family, but in the end he always saved the day. Republican voters are on board with this. An Ipsos survey has shown that a majority of Republican men and Republican women agree with the statement: "Traditional family structures, with a wage-earning father and homemaking mother, best equip children to succeed." In another poll, nearly half of Republicans (and 60% of evangelicals) agreed with the statement: "In a truly Christian family, the husband is the head of the household and his wife submits to his leadership." Harris gets this, which is why her slogan is: "We're not going back."
Trump's attempt to protect women might catch on a little with older, married women who don't like all the changes in the country since the 1950s. Some of them like the idea of being protected by a man. But when Trump talks about "protection" to younger women (and, of course, many older women), they hear "control," and they don't want to have Trump control their lives. Whether Trump will pick up more votes among older married working-class women who were on the fence than he will lose among younger women who were at least open to him because prices used to be lower is unknowable at this point, but we don't like his odds. (V)