Julia Roberts has recorded a campaign ad for a political action committee supporting Kamala Harris. “In the one place in America which still has a right to choose, you can vote any way you want and nobody will ever know. . . What happens in the [polling] booth, stays in the booth,” the Hollywood star says in a confidential voice. “Did you vote the right way, honey?” a seemingly friendly but controlling husband asks on camera. “I sure did,” his wife replies with a knowing smile.
Democrat hopes of victory rest on the premise that women are going to kick Trump firmly in the ballots, where it hurts. But women are not shouting their support for Harris from the rooftops in the way that men bellowed their approval of Trump at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. Arguably, the Roberts advertisement is deeply sexist, portraying American women as if they were stuck in the 1950s, under the heel of their men and rebelling privately in the only way they can. It is an odd way to promote a female candidate with a 50-50 chance of making history as America’s first woman president.
Yet Michelle Obama relayed the same message as Roberts in an otherwise barnstorming speech in Kalamazoo, Michigan. “If you are a woman who lives in a household of men that don’t listen to you or value your opinion, just remember your vote is a private matter. Regardless of the political views of your partner, you get to choose,” she said. Liz Cheney, the outcast former Republican congresswoman touring battleground states with Harris, has also been urging women to “vote their conscience”. Your vote is “secret”, she reminded them.
When big guns make the same closing argument, you can be sure it has been focus-grouped and battle-tested. However retrograde the message, the Democrats are hoping there is indeed a silent army of women voters out there – or their campaign is in trouble. The most recent batch of national polls contains some good news for Harris, including a CCES/YouGov poll with a huge 50,000 sample, showing likely voters breaking for her by 51%-47%. Yet for every woman who quietly votes for Harris, the fear is the polls are underestimating Trump.
Worryingly for the Democrats registered Republicans have been voting early in big numbers
The early voting figures are causing particular heartburn. Roughly 50 million Americans have already voted. I’m one of 24 million people to have voted by “in-person absentee ballot", meaning I went to my county office, asked for a ballot, filled it in and “posted” it on the spot in a sealed mailbox in the lobby. (That way, there is no chance of my vote going up in smoke. Several ballot boxes in Oregon and Washington state were set on fire yesterday.)
Worryingly for the Democrats, in states which assign party affiliation and gender, registered Republicans have been voting early in big numbers. The Trump campaign made a fatal blunder in 2020 by discouraging postal voting and has been urging supporters to “swamp the vote” this time. In North Carolina and Nevada, two states where Harris has been campaigning hard, at least 20,000 more Republicans than Democrats have cast their votes. During the last election, which took place during the pandemic, Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to vote early, although historically the pattern was the other way round.
“I see red,” Jon Ralston, the editor of the Nevada Independent, has warned Democrats about his home state. “There are signs the Dems can bounce back, but the election is…soon.” However, Ralston went on to observe in his blog: “Some have noted that the [Nevada] electorate so far has more males than females, unlike other battlegrounds. That has now changed, and females have a slight edge. Will that keep going up?” It is also possible that the Republicans who have already voted include a number of women who are quietly marking their ballots for Harris, as Julia Roberts advised. An ABC/Ipsos poll last weekend showed Harris beating Trump by 14 points among women, with Trump leading Harris by six points among men.
In the 2022 midterm elections, a Republican “red wave” turned out to be a mirage. The Democratic pollster Celinda Lake has drawn attention to what she calls “ghost voters” – in the midterms, these were women who were not that engaged in politics who turned up at the polls to defend their reproductive rights. “Normally why we miss them is because they are people without vote history or they have a very irregular vote history,” Lake told The Hill. Harris’s message, “We’re not going back,” is aimed squarely at women who feel their daughters have less control over their own bodies than their grandmothers did.
Harris could stun the Trump campaign and emerge victorious. But the Democrats are counting on women voters to win.
Democrats are praying these female “ghost voters” show up to vote. According to California congressman, Ro Khanna, “Now, if people say, ‘Well, there’s a Trump undercount,’ I believe women are going to turn out in droves.”
If this is true, I wish women were making more noise about it. Right now, Republicans are falling over themselves to placate Puerto Rican and Hispanic voters after the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean” at Madison Square Garden. In full-on damage limitation mode, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign said stiffly, “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
Yet the same New York rally was a sausage festival for men, who by my count outnumbered women by five to one. Harris was called “the devil” and the “anti-christ” and was accused of having “pimp handlers” without embarrassment or contrition. Apparently, Hinchcliffe was going to call Harris the “C-word” but this, at least, was discreetly edited out by Trump advisers. It didn’t stop Elon Musk’s political action committee @america leering on X, “America really can’t afford a C-word in the White House right now,” before quietly deleting the post.
There is only a week to go until the polls close. Black people and young people have yet to show up at the polls in great numbers for the Democrats. Cool heads in the Harris campaign are assuring supporters that their ground game is ace; that they know how to identify their missing voters and turn them out on election day. This may be true. Harris could stun the Trump campaign and emerge victorious. But the Democrats are counting on women voters to win.
In 2016 many women regretted their complacency about not backing Hillary Clinton strongly enough and vowed not to repeat the same mistake. Today I am haunted by the female Trump supporter I met outside Madison Square Garden who was wearing the same jacket Melania Trump wore to visit children in migrant camps at the southern border – “I really don’t care, do U?” Do women care enough to stop Trump regaining power? We will soon find out.
Sarah Baxter is director of the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting and a London Standard contributing editor
