WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Speak out on our Ohio Politics Facebook page
When State Sen. Shannon Jones heads to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July, she’ll go as a delegate for Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Should Kasich drop out after the first ballot, the Springboro Republican doesn’t know who she’ll vote for. But she knows who she won’t support.
“I will never support him,” she said of billionaire Donald Trump, the current front-runner. “Ever. Period.”
During basically every presidential campaign year in recent history, some focus has been paid to women voters. In 1996, presidential candidates scrambled to woo “soccer moms.” After 9/11, that focus pivoted to “security moms.”
The nicknames ignore the reality that women are a disparate group, with different political and economic realities, different values and different priorities. But this year, there may be something to the idea of lumping them together.
To wit: “Donald Trump’s numbers with women are abysmal,” said Penny Nance, CEO and president of the conservative Concerned Women for America.
A few examples:
* An April 1 Gallup Poll found that seven in 10 women reported having an unfavorable view of Trump.
* 67 percent of women in a Fox News poll reported an unfavorable or negative impression of Trump;
* 67 percent did in a recent Quinnipiac University Poll and 74 percent in an ABC News/Washington Post poll.
And 70 percent of married women — likely general election voters — said they had an unfavorable opinion of Trump in a poll released last week by Purple Strategies for Bloomberg Politics.
The numbers are a big problem for Trump because women are such a potent political force. Not only are they a statistical majority of the country, they are more likely than men to show up at the polls. According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, the proportion of eligible women who voted has exceeded the proportion of eligible men in every presidential election since 1980. And the number of women voters has equaled or exceeded the number of men voters in every presidential election since 1964.
Polls show Trump had a negative image among women even before he declared his candidacy for president last summer, but his unfavorables have risen since then.
The reasons are various and plentiful. Many women were irritated at Trump’s reaction to Fox News host Megyn Kelly’s questions about his rhetoric about women. They weren’t thrilled when he was quoted in Rolling Stone making fun of former Republican candidate Carly Fiorina’s appearance. After dropping out of the race, Fiorina endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
And even anti-abortion women were mystified at Trump’s assertion that if abortion is outlawed, women who have them should be punished.
“It’s ridiculous to say that women should be punished for abortion,” said Elaine Laux, 21, president of the University of Dayton College Republicans.
“I’m pro-life — born and raised Catholic — and it’s a very strong belief that I hold, but I don’t believe the answer to that is punishing women,” she said. “That goes against what the Republican Party believes and what Christianity believes and I think it’s a moral most people hold — to not hurt people.”
Regardless how incendiary or sexist Trump’s language, party loyalty alone will prevent him from losing the support of all women, said Lyn Bliss, President Ohio Federation of Republican Women.
”We conservative women are strong enough in our own identities that we do not often make the choice to be offended easily — by anyone,” she said.
Bliss’ organization has about 1,700 members statewide. Pending approval, three new clubs will join later this month, including the Young Republican Women of Dayton.
Because of her leadership position, Bliss won’t discuss the merits of individual candidates but made no effort to hide her full intention to support the party’s nominee.
“Whoever is the one to give the acceptance speech on Thursday night at the RNC convention in Cleveland will be the one behind whom I will stand, and the one that will receive all of my support and campaign efforts directed toward their victory over the Democrat candidate,” she said.
Historic numbers
Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, said Trump’s approval numbers are “actually the lowest we’ve ever had in a likely nominee ever since we’ve had polling data.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” she said.
A gender gap has long existed in presidential elections, but it has grown in recent years. Tracking polls by the Gallup organization put the difference between how men and women voted in 2012 at 20 percentage points — the largest gap since it began measuring it in 1952. In 2008, the gap was 14 points.
Trump’s problem is one of numbers: He has to win among men by more than he loses among women. To do that, says Lake, he’ll need to “neutralize” women, and that isn’t happening. “Far from neutralizing,” she said, “he’s almost galvanizing women.”
And Democrats and independents are not the only women who are galvanizing against him.
“I think that a Donald Trump presidency or just a nomination of Donald Trump is bad for the Republican Party,” said Laux, who is studying political science and criminal justice at UD. “I think that it is doing more harm than good, especially in this day and age, when frankly, my generation is a lot more left leaning than in the past.
“I don’t think Donald Trump is the answer to attracting young voters and revitalizing the Republican Party like it so desperately needs.”
In her book, “Feisty and Feminine: A Rallying Cry for Conservative Women,” Nance argues that conservative women defy stereotypes and shouldn’t be taken for granted. They are “intelligent, well-educated, compassionate, accomplished, funny, and fearless — and it’s time for us to stand up and be heard,” she writes.
Trump’s rhetoric, along with his recent comments on abortion, are “detrimental to what we’ve been trying to do,” Nance said in an interview. “He made it sound as if the pro-life movement thought women seeking an abortion should be imprisoned. That is not the case. Nor has it been the case. He either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care enough to take the time to know who we are and what we really believe.”
Jones said Trump’s behavior is beneath what should be emulated by future generations of Americans, including her children.
“I’m trying to raise a 16-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl,” she said. “The values my husband and I set forward for our children are the ones we like in our presidents. To be perfectly honest, racism and sexism and being a bully are things that are completely inconsistent with the values we want to teach our children.”
‘He says what he thinks’
Interviews with women who support Trump show they are concerned about national security, jobs, immigration and most definitely Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
They like Trump’s blunt “tell-it-like-it-is” style and even like his cap, the one that says “Make America Great Again.”
Sandy Feix, 73, of Xenia say there’s almost nothing Trump can do or say to lose her vote.
“All the politicians are always promising — ‘I’ll do this and I’ll do that’ — and then they never follow through,” she said. “If Donald says he’s going to do something, he does it. You can take it to the bank.”
Jo Broughton, 65, of Beavercreek said Trump, while sometimes “a tad” bothersome, will begin re-calibrating his language to bring women back into his camp.
“He says what he thinks and moves on and people take offense to that,” Broughton said. “He’ll learn as time goes by that he needs to tone that down.”
Trump’s support among women would climb if he focused more on issues rather than relying on his personality, said Morgan Landy, a 20-year-old Trump supporter and UD student in accounting and pre-law.
“If he really makes this last effort of his campaign more focused on changing the nation — making America great again, as he likes to say — and really focuses on policies rather than a comical or show aspect, then I think he will be able to get more of the women Republicans for sure,” said Landy. “But if he does veer in the other direction and go for more of the show, then I see him finding trouble at the polls.”
Jones, who leave the Ohio legislature after serving the last decade in the House and Senate, says she has worried for some time about the Republican Party’s gap between men and women voters.
But if Trump is the nominee, she fears that gap could get even larger.
“I think this really accelerates it,” she said.
About the Author
