By Michelle Goldberg
On Saturday night, while watching a film with my family, a text caused me to gasp audibly, startling them. “What’s wrong?” my husband queried, concerned. “Nothing serious,” I replied, somewhat overwhelmed. “It’s just … Ann Selzer has Harris ahead by 3 in Iowa!”
All day, political enthusiasts had been eagerly anticipating the outcomes of J. Ann Selzer’s renowned Iowa poll. The state has been stable for quite a while, but Selzer’s poll, executed for The Des Moines Register, can provide insights into larger trends within the electorate. In 2016, when many Democrats felt assured about Hillary Clinton’s impending win, her findings showing Donald Trump leading by 7 points in Iowa served as an early indicator of his underestimated prowess in the Midwest. (He ultimately secured Iowa by over 9 points.) In 2020, her poll again identified Trump as being ahead by 7 points, which closely mirrored the final results and, in hindsight, indicated that Joe Biden’s margins in adjacent states such as Wisconsin would be slimmer than other surveys suggested.
Many of us were apprehensive to discover how substantial Trump’s lead might be this time, and the revelation of Selzer reporting him in a losing position came as a surprise. The poll might easily prove incorrect; Selzer’s track record is as reliable as anyone else’s in the field, but it is not infallible. If Kamala Harris does prevail in this election, however, this poll will be a part of her success narrative. The root of Selzer’s unexpected finding is straightforward: women. If it holds any accuracy, it implies that traditional political understanding has been significantly underestimating the depth of women’s outrage regarding abortion restrictions and their disdain for Trump’s cartoonishly aggressive campaign.
According to Selzer’s poll, independent women support Harris by 28 points, with women aged 65 and older favoring her by a 2-1 ratio. In a discussion with Tim Miller from The Bulwark, Selzer speculated about what may have influenced these statistics. “It was during the summer that Iowa’s six-week abortion ban came into effect after all legal challenges were resolved,” she noted. Now, she remarked, people have been “living with it for a while.”
Of course, women’s anger has been a significant catalyst in American politics since the affront of Trump’s election in 2016. It fueled the Women’s March, the #MeToo movement, and motivated remarkable numbers of Democratic women to run for office in recent electoral cycles. Female frustration reignited when, due to Trump’s Supreme Court selections, we lost Roe v. Wade and women in various conservative states were deprived of control over their reproductive rights. The anticipated red wave for Republicans in 2022 likely did not surface due to the backlash against Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—the case that nullified Roe. This sentiment helped Democrats achieve notable state-level triumphs last year, including the reelection of Governor Andy Beshear in Kentucky.
Some conservative men have assumed that women’s indignation would diminish. “As we settle back into what appears to be a status quo,” Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini stated to NPR last year, it will be “harder to mobilize people and craft messages about” abortion. Others on the right opted to embrace the gender divide, hoping to energize disenchanted young men, including men of color, to compensate for their losses among women. “For every Karen we lose, there’s a Julio and a Jamal ready to join the MAGA movement,” Rep. Matt Gaetz from Florida proclaimed on the right-leaning network Newsmax this year.
This seems to be the strategy embraced by the Trump campaign. In 2016, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his press secretary, Hope Hicks, were present to help soften his image with some female constituents. In contrast, this year, Trump’s most impactful relative appears to be his aggressive eldest son, Don Jr., who reportedly encouraged Trump to select JD Vance as his running mate, leading to a season filled with memes about women without children.
Trump and his team turned the final evening of the Republican National Convention into a spectacle akin to professional wrestling. The former president has dedicated considerable time to engaging young men through podcasts. Rather than relying on a conventional door-to-door campaign, his team has aimed to reach out to disengaged men who seldom vote, assuming they would naturally align with Trump if only they could be integrated into the political arena.
Neglecting any substantial outreach to women, the campaign has fostered an environment for a carnival of trollish misogyny. In a recent clip, John McEntee, a former aide to Trump likely to play a central role in any subsequent Trump administration, claimed, “When we said we wanted mail-only voting, we meant male: M A L E.” At Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, a speaker referred to Harris’ “pimp handlers,” essentially categorizing her as a prostitute. (His derogatory remark was overshadowed by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s unfortunately racist performance.) Recently, Trump’s aggressive spokesperson, Steven Cheung, labeled the husband of Harris’ campaign manager a “cuck”—incel vernacular for cuckold—who is “unaccustomed to knowing what’s occurring behind his back.” The ex-president himself, during one of his latest displays of contempt for women, stated last week that if he is elected, he’d assign anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy Jr. the task of overseeing “women’s health.”
Perhaps Trump’s hyper-masculine strategy will succeed. A majority of women will almost certainly support Harris, but Trump could achieve even larger margins among men. With the majority of polls indicating a neck-and-neck race, the fledgling sprouts of Democratic optimism could be eradicated tomorrow. Among Republicans, however, there is already a growing realization that the male voters they are relying on to substitute for responsible suburban women may not be entirely dependable. “The core narrative of the Barbie movie was about distracting men so they wouldn’t vote,” Gaetz commented on the social media platform X on Monday. “Don’t let the Barbie movie become a reality.”
