Trump has pissed off the matriarchs

Women over 65 are threatening to deliver Iowa to Kamala Harris, and it's definitely because of abortion.

Hello readers, we’re back with another Nightcap. And welcome new subscribers, I’m thrilled to have you here.

This has been, I’d argue, one of the most unhinged final weeks of a presidential election in U.S. history. Donald Trump drove a garbage truck in circles around a tarmac, intending to highlight a Joe Biden gaffe about garbage that no one cared about but accidentally just calling more attention to Tony Hinchcliffe calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage at his own rally. Trump also graphically simulated a blow job on a microphone this week for some reason and stated, rather creepily, that he intends to “protect women…whether the women like it or not,” which is simply not the closing message I would advise an accused serial rapist to land on.

But we all know Trump is unwell, and we all know that he might win a second term anyway, because most of his supporters don’t appear to give a single fuck what he says or does at this point as long as him winning “owns the libs.” That said, I want to talk about Iowa: Political nerds have been losing their minds all weekend over a shock Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll showing Kamala Harris leading Trump by 3 points in the blood red state, which voted aggressively for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Polls are, of course, deeply imperfect predictors of election outcomes, but even if this one is quite far off, it would still be remarkable: For comparison’s sake, the very same pollster found Trump beating Biden by 18 points in July and beating Harris by 4 points in September. So even if Trump ends up winning Iowa again, he will win by a much, much tighter margin, which bodes pretty poorly for him in less red states. (FWIW, Republican political strategist Joey Mannarino was so shook by this new poll that he’s pledged to castrate himself on camera if Trump loses Iowa, to which I say: don’t threaten me with a good time!)

According to the voter survey accompanying the poll, the swing toward Harris is being driven by older and politically independent women:

Independent voters, who had consistently supported Trump in the leadup to this election, now break for Harris. That’s driven by the strength of independent women, who back Harris by a 28-point margin, while independent men support Trump, but by a smaller margin. 

Similarly, senior voters who are 65 and older favor Harris. But senior women support her by a more than 2-to-1 margin, 63% to 28%, while senior men favor her by just 2 percentage points, 47% to 45%.  

Based on Iowa’s demographic makeup, this suggests that white evangelical women, who have long supported Trump, are finally turning on him this time around.

Asked why they support Harris, half of respondents said their top election issue was the “future of democracy,” and 22 percent said “abortion.” For local context, this past July, a 6-week abortion ban went into effect in Iowa, replacing the state’s previous 20-week ban. Six weeks, counted from a woman’s last period, is before many people even realize they’re pregnant. So this extreme ban clearly didn’t play very well with the voters in Iowa, 61 percent of whom support legal abortion in all or most cases.

Many of us who have been covering reproductive rights for a long time are not surprised that abortion is a central issue in this election. I am tickled to see neoconservative men like Bill Kristol finally coming around to this realization—“AM I THE ONLY PERSON WHO DETECTS, among many of my fellow commentators commentating away on this election, a kind of reluctance, almost a kind of embarrassment, to state the obvious: Abortion rights is the issue that could decide this presidential contest,” he wrote in The Bulwark today—but better late than never, my friend.

Along with Iowa, I suspect Trump is going to have an unusually big woman problem in Georgia, where we know of two women died due to the state’s new abortion ban, and in Texas, where we just found out about another two tragic and preventable miscarriage deaths this week. It looks like he’s already getting a walloping in Pennsylvania, where women registered as Democrats made up nearly a third of early votes this year from people who did not vote in 2020. And nationwide, women are outpacing men by 10 points in early voting, which I know has Trump’s campaign in a panic.

Now, I don’t want to get ahead of myself here like we (the media) all did in 2016, assume these numbers mean Kamala’s won, and then end up crying and vomiting on election night if it goes the way of the fascist. But we can safely say that Republicans, who have been gloating about this election for months as if Trump has it in the bag, are getting their asses handed to them by a bunch of 65+-year-old women who remember a time before Roe v. Wade and don’t intend to let their daughters live in that kind of place again. Thank you, ladies.