Kamala Harris Has 21-Point Lead Over Donald Trump Among Women: Poll

Kamala Harris has an “off-the-charts” 21-point lead over Donald Trump among women, polling shows.
While the November election is expected to be an extremely tight contest, there are large margins among some demographics. In a new NBC News poll, women’s support for Harris was at 58 percent, 21 points ahead of Trump’s 37 percent.
The survey was conducted among 1,000 registered voters, between September 13 and 17, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Conversely, Trump has a 12-point lead over Harris among men, with 52 percent supporting him and 40 percent backing Harris.
In total, this is a gender gap of 33 points, which would “obliterate” the “historically high” gender gaps already seen in the 2020 and 2016 elections, NBC News political correspondent Steve Kornacki said.
While a gender gap has long been a “staple” in American politics, it is “absolutely off the charts” to see “anything like a 33-point gender gap in November,” he said.
When Newsweek contacted Trump’s campaign for comment, it was directed to the former president’s recent post on Truth Social over the weekend.
On Saturday, Trump wrote: “Women are poorer than they were four years ago, are less healthy than they were four years ago, are less safe on the streets than they were four years ago, are more depressed and unhappy than they were four years ago, and are less optimistic and confident in the future than they were four years ago! I will fix all of that, and fast, and at long last this national nightmare will be over.”
He went on: “Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free! You will no longer be thinking about abortion, because it is now where it always had to be, with the states, and a vote of the people – and with powerful exceptions, like those that Ronald Reagan insisted on, for rape, incest, and the life of the mother – but not allowing for Democrat demanded late term abortion in the 7th, 8th, or 9th month, or even execution of a baby after birth. I will protect women at a level never seen before.
“They will finally be healthy, hopeful, safe, and secure. Their lives will be happy, beautiful, and great again!”
Newsweek has also contacted the Harris campaign by email for comment.
At a Monday rally in Pennsylvania, Trump said: “I always thought women liked me, I never thought I had a problem. But the fake news keep saying that women don’t like—I don’t believe it. You know what, they like to have strong borders, they like to have safety.”
The NBC poll is just one of several surveys and experts that have predicted a “larger-than-normal gender gap in 2024,” as Melissa Deckman, Public Religion Research Institute CEO and author of The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy, previously told Newsweek.
One reason for this could be abortion, which is turning out to be one of the most important issues in this election as the Democratic Party tries to position itself as the party of reproductive freedom.
“Trump has an increasing gender gap and has been losing support among women voters, particularly among suburban women for whom abortion appears to be a top issue,” professor Sophia Jordán Wallace of the University of Washington’s Department of Political Science told Newsweek.
She said she believes one of Harris’ “strongest points” is her position on abortion.
Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer previously said abortion was such a mobilizing issue for women that it was the reason some Republican women ended up supporting her in her last election.
Whitmer told the 9 to 5ish With theSkimm podcast in July: “I sat across the table from so many women who said: ‘I’m a Republican, I did not vote for you, but I’m out knocking doors for you this time around because you’re the only one fighting for my daughter’s right.”
Trump says he believes the states should have the power to determine their own abortion policies and has denied Democratic claims that he would pursue a nationwide ban on the procedure. But has not been willing to say he would veto a national ban if it came across his desk.
Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance, has faced criticism for his comments about women, most recently for a resurfaced remark he made on a podcast in 2021, when he said professional women “choose a path to misery” when they prioritize careers over having children.
Speaking to American Moment, a conservative nonprofit, Vance said: “You have women who think that truly the liberationist path is to spend 90 hours a week working in a cubicle…instead of starting a family and having children.
“What they don’t realize—and I think some of them do eventually realize that, thank God—is that that is actually a path to misery. And the path to happiness and to fulfillment is something that these institutions are telling people not to do.”
When Newsweek contacted Vance’s team for comment, it was directed to comments he made to CNN’s Dana Bash last month.
“I want to expand the child tax credit,” he said. “I want to stop those surprise medical bills. I want to make housing more affordable so that, if you have a young family, you can actually afford to put them in a home. And I think that it is unfortunate that so much of our public leadership has become anti-family.”
Vance continued: “One final point on this. Dana, if you go back to the COVID era, one thing that really frustrated me and motivated some of these comments is we were at a point where we were kicking kids out of school. We were masking 3-year-olds and putting the masks back on them even though, even as they were trying to rip them off at school.
“I think that if we had more people who took the right perspective and had a little bit more understanding of how little kids actually operate, we would not have made so many those mistakes,” he said.
Update 9/24/24, 11:44 a.m. ET: This story was updated to include previous remarks made by Donald Trump and JD Vance.