The Republican nominee “will understand the power of women,” President Joe Biden warned Monday, calling for votes for the vice president since the Democratic convention in Chicago.
He referred to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision, shaped by his predecessor Donald Trump, to energize the constitutional guarantee of the right to abortion, which Kamala Harris instead pledges to defend.
In an opinion poll published by CBS, 56% of women surveyed said they wanted to vote for the vice-president and 44% for the former head of state.
54% of men polled say they prefer Donald Trump, and 45% turn to Kamala Harris.
The numbers from a Siena/New York Times poll conducted in three swing states are even more striking: 52% of voters say they prefer the Republican candidate, and 39% his rival; while 56% of voters support the Democratic candidate, compared to only 35% behind Donald Trump.
– “A Gap” –
American women voting more to the left is certainly nothing new.
But such gaps “are no longer a ditch, they’re a chasm,” they’re “unheard of,” Frank Luntz, an influential Republican pollster, recently noted on CNN, going so far as to predict that “there would be very real divorces due to this choice.
The analyst sees this as the result of Donald Trump’s strategy, with his mockery of Kamala Harris’s laugh or her intelligence.
“Women can’t stand it,” he observes.
In fact, far from intimidating the vice president’s troops, the sexist attacks from the Trump camp since the start of the campaign seem to inflame them.
The Republican running mate, JD Vance, for example, caused an uproar by criticizing the childless “old ladies” in the Democratic Party.
– Abortion –
“Masculinity is central to Donald Trump’s campaign. He constantly compares himself to other men to say how attractive and strong he is, and he often demeans women” while legitimizing “violence and misogyny,” explains Sabrina Karim, a specialist in gender issues and teacher at Cornell University.
It thus exerts an attraction that is also “not limited to men”, emphasizes Sonia Gipson Rankin, professor of law at the University of New Mexico.
While campaigning in Pennsylvania on Sunday, Kamala Harris alluded to this virilistic rhetoric.
“In recent years, a kind of perverse vision has taken hold, which consists in thinking that a leader’s strength is measured by the people he crushes. While we know that a leader’s true strength is measured by the people he lifts up. “, she assured.
The difference between female and male votes is, of course, driven by the bans or restrictions on abortion that many conservative states have enacted since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision.
– Glass ceiling –
It will be “a big issue”, but the two candidates will have to “show that their projects concern the whole electorate”, beyond gender differences and other identity associations, warns Sonia Gipson Rankin.
Kamala Harris almost never refers to the fact that she could become the first female president of the United States.
In this respect, her campaign is completely different from Hillary Clinton’s openly feminist campaign, which was beaten by Donald Trump in 2016.
The former secretary of state urged Americans on Monday to finally break “the highest, hardest of glass ceilings” in November by choosing the Democratic nominee.
Accentuated by the duel between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, this electoral divergence between men and women in the United States may be indicative of a deeper and ongoing trend.
“Polls show that some young American voters have a different orientation than that of young female voters,” more conservative, which “is different from previous generations,” according to Sabrina Karim.
Source: AFP