Republican women who voted for Trump in 2016 are signaling a sea change for 2022.
Yesterday, I was listening to a group of nine Republican women who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 discuss their feelings about the current political moment in America, courtesy of The Focus Group, a weekly podcast produced by Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark. And what I heard kind of blew my mind. Not only do none of these women, who live in the bellwether swing states of Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, want Trump to run again in 2024, most of them are leaning toward voting for Democratic candidates for governor and senate in their own states.
Why? Because the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision eviscerating the right to an abortion, plus the declared stances of many Republican office-holders and candidates in support of banning the practice in their own states — without exceptions — along with potentially a federal abortion ban, is hitting them in deeply personal ways. Just read these sound-bites that I’ve transcribed from their conversation:
[Pennsylvania Republican woman]: “Even though I’m conservative, in many ways, I don’t want anyone telling me what I can or cannot do with my body and I don’t want to judge anyone else who makes the choices that are right for their lives.” [Same woman]: “I think [GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug] Mastriano is just like a nut job…” Asked why, she said, “It’s the things I strongly dislike that will keep me away. For example, Mastriano is a big anti-vaxxer, big don’t tell us what to do with our bodies. Yet in the same breath… he’s going to try to tell me what to do with my body. Even though he’s saying the government shouldn’t tell him what he should do with his body. Talk about confusing messaging. I’m like dude, like, if it works for you, great, but if you’re female, it’s not to work for you. So I cannot stand his mixed message on that at all.” [Second Pennsylvania Republican woman]: “I would say I would consider myself generally to be a pro-life person. But it to me it’s absolutely absurd to say that there are no exceptions to that. I am pro-choice. I do believe that people, that every woman should have the ability to make their own choices. But you know if I was going to lean a little bit more, it might be a little more pro-life, but I’m not going to say that there are no exceptions to that. I think about how that would have impacted my own life.”One woman from Ohio, who was already aware that Republican senate candidate J.D. Vance says he opposes abortion without exception, was quick to say that she would flatly never vote for him for that reason alone. None of the nine women in the focus group disagreed with her.
But what really jumped out at me was how the women responded when one of them, a Republican from Georgia, spontaneously brought up a story from her 18 year old daughter. Here’s how that unfolded:
“My daughter told me a very scary thing last weekend, where we’re moving her into college and things like that. And one of the things we were talking about was just her cell phone or whatever. And she told me this the night before I’m moving her in. She has gotten rid of her app that tracks her period.”
Suddenly another woman interrupts. “Oh, yes, she needs to get rid of that. She definitely needs to get rid of that.”
A third chimes in, “I’ve heard of this, it’s you know, people will say that they’re getting rid of their phone app where you can track your cycle and people are getting rid of it because they’re afraid that that’ll get subpoenaed because you’re gonna have your phone records subpoenaed you know if you [are thinking of having an abortion].”
The first woman, from Georgia, then shows the group that she’s really thought hard about how some Republican lawmakers in the state have crafted their legislation. “We have exceptions for rape and incest, but there needs to be a police report,” she says, her voice rising. “How many police reports do you think accompany incest or even rape? Like 12 year old kids do not file police reports. They hope to god they’re not pregnant, and they deny it for as long as they possibly can until they can’t.”
To that, all the women murmur their agreement. They know these stories because they’ve experienced them personally, or through close friends. And they are hyper-aware of what anti-abortion zealots are imposing on everyone else, now that the Court has given them the green light.
They’re not alone. As this chart from Google Search Trends shows, a lot of people in America suddenly took a heightened interest in period tracker apps a few months ago. First, attention jumped the week of May 1–7, right when the draft Dobbs decision leaked to the press. Then it really spiked in late June as people anxiously awaited and then took in the news that the Supreme Court was really overturning Roe.
Nine Republican women in a single focus group aren’t proof of a trend, but I’m willing to bet this is a harbinger, alongside the other signs we’re getting of a dramatic increase in women registering to vote in states where abortion rights are in flux. The tens of millions of women who use period tracker apps, or who have just decided to stop using them, either way still get a monthly reminder from their bodies of what’s at stake. More and more of them are sharing that awareness. I think they’re going to change the course of the 2022 election.