Donald Trump Is Struggling With White Women: CNN Polling Analysis

Former President Donald Trump is struggling to win over white women, according to polling analysis by CNN.

According to pollster and political analyst Harry Enten, white women have historically supported Republican candidates in presidential elections, with Mitt Romney winning the demographic by 9 points in 2012, and Trump by 6 and 7 points in 2016 and 2020, respectively.

However, according to Enten’s analysis, Trump is not faring so well among white women this year, leading the demographic by just 1 point.

“He’s doing the worst, if this holds, for a GOP candidate this century among white women,” said Enten, who previously worked for FiveThirtyEight.

Enten did not provide a breakdown of how he formed his aggregates but cited an average of post-election surveys from 2012-2020 and pre-election surveys this year. Newsweek has contacted the campaigns of Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris for comment via email.

The numbers could spell trouble for the Trump campaign, for whom female voters have been an electoral weakness. Polls have consistently shown that women back Harris over Trump by a wide margin.

Enten’s analysis shows that without the support of white women, the Trump campaign could be missing out on a big portion of the electorate, with the demographic making up 36 percent of all voters, compared to white men who make up 34 percent, women of color who make up 16 percent and men of color who make up 13 percent. Women make up 51 percent of the electorate in the U.S.

Enten suggested that female voters favor Harris because of Trump’s rhetoric surrounding abortion rights. Polls have shown that for women in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan—where more than 80 percent of voters are white—abortion is the most important issues in the presidential election.

According to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll, which surveyed 688 likely voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio between September 21 and 26, 27 percent of female voters chose abortion as their top issue, while only 8 percent of men did.

Despite taking credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, which gave a Americans a constitutional right to abortion, Trump has been more moderate on the issue than many of his Republican colleagues.

In April, he declined to support a national ban on abortion and has said that he supports abortion rights being decided at the state level. He has also supported exceptions for cases of rape and incest.

However, in the debate against Harris, he declined to say whether he would veto a national ban if it landed on his desk.

When moderator Linsey Davis asked him directly, he said: “Well I won’t have to because it won’t happen.” And when she pressed Trump, citing the fact that his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, has previously said the former president would veto it, Trump answered: “Well I didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness.”

Meanwhile, Harris has been the Democratic Party‘s leading voice on reproductive rights, having launched a nationwide “fight for reproductive freedoms” tour this year and visiting a Minnesota branch of Planned Parenthood in March.

According to Enten, it is Harris’ unequivocal support for abortion that may have turned white women against Trump.

“After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, white women in these suburban areas, in these key battleground states, have very much turned against Republicans,” he said, adding that white women could be crucial to a victory for Harris. “If she wins, it could ultimately be because she did so well with white women.”

In August, the group White Women: Answer the Call raised $8.5 million for Harris’ campaign through a Zoom call attended by 200,000 women. Organizer Shannon Watts cited the Trump campaign’s rhetoric surrounding abortion as a reason for their support.

“When you have two Republican candidates who are calling women ‘cat ladies’ and mocking them for not having children and threatening to take away abortion and even IVF, it is hopefully a wake-up call to the white women who have been voting in favor of white supremacy and patriarchy,” Watts told theGrio.

However, not all polls have shown declining support for Trump among white women. According to a PBS News/NPR/Marist poll, conducted between September 27 and October 1, Trump holds a 13-point lead among non-college educated white women, with 55 percent of the vote to Harris‘ 42 percent. The poll surveyed 1,294 likely voters and had a margin of error of ±3.7 percentage points.

Fox News is scheduled to air a town hall Wednesday with Trump and an audience composed entirely of women amid the campaign’s latest effort to address the wide gender gap in the polls.

“I just wish he would—God would help him—be careful with what he says. I think he should think a little more before he makes certain statements that upset people,” Joyce Cluley, 81, told HuffPost outside a Trump campaign stop in a suburb near Philadelphia on Tuesday.

Trump previously said in a Truth Social post that women will be “happy” and “great again” if he wins the presidency. He has also sought to cast himself as a “protector” of women.

“You will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger….You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today,” Trump said last month at a rally in Pennsylvania. “You will be protected, and I will be your protector.

“Women will be healthy, happy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”