Trump Shores Up the Female Vote

So, why did Trump speak at the pro-life march? First, he should be given kudos for doing it, even if his motivation was ... ahem... purely political. He is the first president to have done so, and that is a milestone. But let's look at the numbers which undoubtedly helped him decide this was a good move to make.

First, consider the importance of the female vote:

(As of Dec 2019) Trump – who took 41% of the women's vote to Clinton's 54% in 2016 – would lose female voters by bigger margins to Biden (who would get 51% of female voters, to Trump's 36%), Warren (who has 53% female support to Trump's 38%) and Sanders (who would capture 54% of women voters, compared to 36% who would vote for Trump in a general election matchup). Buttigieg would win women voters by a 47-36% margin against Trump, while Bloomberg would draw 48% of the female vote to Trump's 35%, according to the survey.

Those changes might seem relatively small, experts note, but they pose a big warning sign for a president who lost the popular vote in 2016 and won the electoral college by small margins in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. "It doesn't take a lot in this election," Walsh says....

In 2018, when Democrats flipped control of the House of Representatives and picked up many state legislative seats, female voter turnout was 3.2% higher than that of men.... The numbers means that Trump has not really made inroads with female voters in his three years in office, analysts say, troubling for an incumbent.  

In matchups with every one of those five Democrats in the Fox poll, Trump's gender gap stays the same or widens, the polls shows, reflecting the increasing gender polarization between the two parties. 

Women vote Democratic more than men – 2018, for example, was the first time in exit polling history that Democrats took control of the House of Representatives without winning a majority of male voters.

We know Trump has an increasingly difficult time attracting women, and that this difficulty could easily bring him to defeat in 2020. He didn't win by majority vote in 2016. He can't afford to lose any voters in 2020. His gap with women is increasing.

According to Catalist, a progressive data company, college-educated white women swung Democratic by 10 points from 2016 to 2018, and non-college-educated white women swung Democratic by seven points. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed that both groups of white women favored a generic Democrat over Trump by margins of 33 and six points, respectively. The pool of women willing to embrace the Republican brand is shrinking.

Second, remember that women - especially Republican women - are more pro-life than men, even Republican men.

Politically, abortion has been a stronger voting issue for Republicans than for Democrats. Abortion ranks as the second-most-important issue for Republicans in deciding their vote for president, behind immigration. But for Democrats, it is fifth — behind health care, America's role in the world, climate change and personal financial well-being... 

54% of men identified as "pro-choice," compared with 60% of women. For women of the different parties, 77% of Democratic women identified as "pro-choice," while 68% of Republican women identified as "pro-life." (A lower percentage of Republican men, 59%, considered themselves "pro-life."). 62% of Republican women said they oppose laws that allow abortion at any time during pregnancy in cases of rape or incest. They are the only group to voice majority opposition to that.... 

Republican women are also the only group to say overwhelmingly that life begins at conception. About three-quarters said so, compared with less than half of Republican men and a third of Democratic women.

It's a reminder that Republican women, in many ways, are the backbone of the movement opposing abortion rights.  

As a pro-life candidate, there is no way he will win most Democrat women. 74% of Democrat women support murdering children, only 25% identify as pro-life. If he has to run as a pro-life candidate - which, as a Republican, he does - then his only hope is to double down on the voter most likely to turn out in the general election: the Republican woman. Without that voter, he will not regain the White House. As NPR notes, "If nothing else, it represents the power of the Republican female vote."

Maybe Trump really is pro-life. Given that he famously signed off on giving Planned Parenthood a half billion dollars in federal tax funding each year, that's hard to credit. But he certainly wants to be re-elected, so he is going to act pro-life, regardless of what he personally believes.