November 14, 2018
Women Are Winning In The Trump Era
This week could go down in history as the time so-called journalists finally embarrassed themselves beyond all redemption. While nothing could top CNN’s Jim Acosta making a complete fool of himself at a presidential press conference, Vogue magazine ran a close second for publishing a patronizing story titled “Why Do White Women Keep Voting for the GOP and Against Their Own Interests?”
Yet again, the liberal media elite attempt to explain away those pesky Republican women who just don’t seem to get it, especially the overwhelming number of white women who voted for Republican Brian Kemp in the Georgia governor’s race (75 percent), Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas (60 percent), and Republican Ron DeSantis in the Florida governor’s race (51 percent).
According to Vogue, women who vote for GOP candidates, especially male Republican candidates, are “problems” who need to be figured out. We need to be told what we should care about. We could all benefit from a good “conversion therapy” session, so that we can learn how to vote the correct way and stop “disappointing” the female race once and for all.
It was so condescending, insulting, and un-American, the article might as well have demanded that white women have their right to vote revoked.
I’m a suburban, college-educated white woman, so according to the media, those three characteristics should make me a triple threat to the president’s re-election chances in 2020.
Just a few problems with that argument: I voted for President Trump in 2016 and for Republican candidates last Tuesday.
I don’t need a fashion magazine to tell me what is in my own best interest. Instead, I look at what President Trump has already achieved:
The economy has added nearly 4.5 million jobs since his election. Unemployment for women, African-Americans, and Hispanic-Americans has plummeted to record-low levels.
The women’s unemployment rate is 3.6 percent, the lowest it has been in 65 years. Since January 2017, 2.2 million new jobs have been filled by women, and 1.4 million American women have joined the labor force.
More support has been given to women entrepreneurs, and by all measures, women are winning in the Trump economy.
I am not a “foot soldier of the patriarchy,” as the self-proclaimed “radical feminist” and author Mona Eltahawy would have you believe.
I can think for myself and don’t have a husband who tells me how to vote, despite what failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has claimed.
And I’m not the only one.
In 2016, 52 percent of white women voted for President Trump, while 41 percent of all women voted for him—pretty impressive numbers, especially considering he was running against the first female presidential nominee in our nation’s history.
And while exit polling from the midterm elections shows that 59 percent of college-educated white women, and 59 percent of all women, voted Democrat this time around, we can’t overlook the fact that general election polls reveal a sustained pattern of female support for Democrat presidential candidates declining since 2008.
Barack Obama’s vote share among women was higher in both 2008 and 2012 than Hillary Clinton’s vote share among women in 2016. It should be noted that Obama’s female support decreased between his 2008 and 2012 campaigns, and that the trend of deteriorating female support for Democrats continued again in 2016.
In addition, in looking at female impressions of the president and Republicans in Washington, President Trump’s October approval rating overperformed the favorability of Republicans in Congress by four percentage points. President Trump’s approval among women also outpaced the generic Republican on the generic ballot by four points.
The “gender gap” as described in the media is more of a generic Republican ballot gap, and possibly a congressional Republican vulnerability, but the president’s poll numbers among women exceed those for both the generic Republican as well as congressional Republicans.
What’s more, America First polling shows that in 2018, a majority of female voters highly approve of Trump’s performance on the issues facing the United States today, especially his handling of the economy (64 percent of women approve), creating jobs and reducing unemployment (55 percent approve), supporting law enforcement (53 percent approve), and reducing taxes on middle-class Americans (51 percent approve).
Women are witnessing President Trump take immediate and direct action to improve the lives of Americans as a whole. Women of all backgrounds are winning in America, and thanks to President Trump, we have only just begun.
-- Erin Montgomery, Communications Director for America First Action