Harris seeks boost from female voters to help her over finish line

Vice President Harris is seeking to maximize turnout from female voters in the final days before the election in hopes the critical voting bloc can carry her over the finish line. 

While much of the conversation in the closing days of the campaign has surrounded Harris’s soft support among men, Democrats argue that women have the chance to boost Harris. They point to the voting bloc’s role in securing Democratic wins in the 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections. 

But Republicans remain skeptical that women, particularly suburban women in swing states, will be a shoo-in for Harris, pointing to concerns over the economy. 

“Kamala Harris is positioned to win this election because of women,” said Jessica Mackler, the president of EMILY’s List, a group dedicated to electing Democratic women who support abortion rights to office. 

On Wednesday, the Harris campaign hammered former President Trump for defending comments he made in September, when he pledged to be a “protector of women.” During a rally on Wednesday, Trump said he disagreed with counsel from his advisers that he not use such language. 

"I said, 'Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them. I’m going to protect them from migrants coming in. I’m going to protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles and lots of other things,'" Trump told supporters in Wisconsin. 

Harris responded to Trump’s remarks on Thursday, calling them “the latest in a series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency.” 

"It actually is very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies,” the vice president told reporters in Wisconsin. 

And earlier this week, the Harris campaign released an ad featuring actor Julia Roberts in which she encouraged women to vote for the vice president even if their husbands were backing Trump. 

“In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want. And no one will ever know,” Roberts says in the spot. 

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign worked to amplify comments from Harris campaign surrogate Mark Cuban, in which he told ABC’s “The View” on Thursday that “you never see [Trump] around strong, intelligent women.”

Trump’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt tied Harris to the comments in a statement to The Hill. 

“Kamala Harris' campaign thinks women who support President Trump are weak and dumb, and she takes issue with President Trump wanting to protect women, men, and children from migrant crime and foreign adversaries,” Leavitt said. 

“Women deserve a President who will secure our nation's borders, remove violent criminals from our neighborhoods, and build an economy that helps our families thrive — and that's exactly what President Trump will do,” she continued. 

On policy, Harris and her allies have sought to amplify abortion access and reproductive health care in the closing salvos of the campaign, tying the issues to her campaign’s theme of “freedom.” 

Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who sued the state after she said she was denied an abortion while facing pregnancy complications, delivered remarks alongside her husband ahead of Harris’s own closing argument remarks on the Ellipse outside the White House on Tuesday. 

Harris herself addressed the issue in her remarks, telling supporters she will “restore what Donald Trump and his hand-selected Supreme Court justices took away from the women of America.” 

“Kamala Harris has delivered this really clear message about the contrast, particularly on the issue of reproductive freedom,” Mackler said. 

Democrats point to their past success on the issue. In 2022, Democrats largely blunted what was expected to be a red wave in most parts of the country by focusing on abortion access in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The effects were also felt a year later in Virginia’s off-year elections, in which Democrats took control of the state’s General Assembly. 

In 2024, Harris and Democrats are tying Trump to bans and restrictions on the procedure at the state level. 

“What we have seen since the Dobbs decision in every election is that women are motivated on the issue of abortion and this election is going to be fought and won on abortion,” Mackler said. 

The issue of abortion access seems to be resonating for young women in particular. According to a KFF survey released earlier this month, roughly 4 in 10 women under 30 said abortion is the most important issue to their vote. 

Republicans, on the other hand, say abortion is not the only factor impacting the way women will vote in November. 

“I don’t think they want to be defined as an abortion voter,” said Kristin Davison, a national GOP strategist. “Obviously they care about the issue, but it’s not their main driver because they probably have bills to pay and crime is going up in their Atlanta suburb and they aren’t sure Harris is up to the job to fix it.” 

Republicans also point to the suburban female swing voters, predicting they could vote against Harris on the economy. 

“The No. 1 issue for suburban women is the economy,” said Lauren Zelt, a national Republican strategist. “The Harris campaign is working hard to make this about reproductive issues and understandably so. But at the end of the day women are the primary financial decisionmakers for their families, and they’re going to be voting with their pocket books.” 

However, many Democrats say the two issues are fundamentally linked.

“I don’t see abortion and economy as separate issues,” said Rachel O'Leary Carmona, the executive director of the Women’s March. “When we’re talking about the economy, I don’t think with the amount of women heads of household, women primary earners, women who are in the workforce that we can extricate the issue of reproductive freedom from concerns about the economy.” 

Others have pointed to poor messaging toward women on the part of Republicans, pointing to overly masculine messaging from figures such as Elon Musk. 

“This bromance and masculinity stuff, it borders on edgy to the point that it’s going to make women uncomfortable,” former 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told Fox News’s Bret Baier on Tuesday. 

“You have got affiliated PACs doing commercials about calling Kamala the 'C' word or speakers at Madison Square Garden, you know, referring to her and her ‘pimps,’” she continued, referring to a video posted on the social platform X by Musk's super PAC calling Harris a "communist." The video was deleted by the group on Monday. 

“That is not the way to win women. That is not the way to win people who are concerned about Trump’s style,” Haley said. 

Early voting data shows heightened enthusiasm among women. According to a Politico analysis of the early vote data, women account for 55 percent of the early vote compared to men, who make up 45 percent in the battleground states. 

Democrats say they are optimistic about those numbers, considering how women have broken in polling so far. 

A CBS News poll released earlier this week showed 55 percent of women supporting Harris, while 43 percent said the same about Trump. On the flip side, 45 percent of men said they were supporting Harris and 54 percent said the same about the former president. 

“Every state will be different,” Davison said. “I do think a woman in Buckhead, outside of Atlanta, or Marietta, is going to have a different approach than someone who is in Media, Pa., which is in Delaware County outside of Philadelphia.”