Harris hopes it depends on the women’s vote

In battleground states like Arizona and Michigan, young women are lining up to vote early. Kamala Harris hopes they are the wave that turns the election for her.

On an unseasonably warm morning on the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus, scores of students stood in line to vote at the university’s early voting center.

Among them was Keely Ganong, a third-year student who was excited to vote for Harris.

“He is just a leader that I can look up to to represent my country,” he said.

“Gender equality is at the forefront of the news,” said her friend Lola Nordlinger, speaking about abortion rights. “A woman’s choice is something that is very personal to her, and it should not be someone else’s decision.”

Ms. Ganong said that everyone in the center is talking about voting one week before the election day.

“The students’ voices will make a difference” in the election, the 20-year-old said.

Adrianna Pete, a 24-year-old who was on campus volunteering to teach students about the democratic process, agrees:

“I feel like a lot of women are waking up,” she said.

These young women are, in many ways, typical Harris voters. According to a recent poll by the Harvard Institute of Politics, Harris leads among women 18-29 by a whopping 30 points. Among college students specifically, of either gender, he leads by 38 points, a recent survey from the Inside Higher Ed/Generation Lab survey found.

With neck-and-neck voting both nationally and in battleground states like Michigan, Harris will be counting on these young women to turn out, in large numbers, to win the election.

A point not lost on Hannah Brocks, 20, who waited in a long line last week to attend a packed meeting with Harris and Walz in Ann Arbor at a local park. He was part of a school club of young Democrats, knocking on doors, posting flyers and making phone calls to try to convince people to vote for Harris.

“I just love the way he talks about people in general,” Ms. Brocks said. “It’s a lot of love and compassion in the way he talks about other people.”

That margin among young women could widen even further if voter turnout in this election follows the same patterns as it did in 2020, when about 10 million more women voted than men, according to the Center for American Women in Politics.

Early polls show a similar breakdown in this regard, with about 55% women, 45% men, according to a Politico survey, although analysts caution that we don’t know who these women voted for.

But when a lot was done how this election shapes boys and girlsthe truth is more complicated. In that same Harvard poll, Harris’ lead among white women under 30 was 13 points over Trump, compared to a 55-point advantage among non-white women under 30.

When white women of all ages are examined, Harris’ lead all but disappears. History may repeat itself – in 2016, more white women supported Trump than Hillary Clinton. In 2020, Trump’s lead among white women widened.

Democrats generally have a harder time with white, uneducated, male and female voters. If Harris wants to win, he will not only have to get a large number of young women to support him, he will have to convince other women who may not fit the mold.

“The best avatar for a voter is a transitioning woman who didn’t go to college,” said Evan Roth Smith, of Blueprint, a Democratic polling firm.

Although these women seem to trust the Republican Party on issues such as immigration and the economy, Mr. Smith says abortion could be an issue that pits them against Harris.

The vice president has promised to restore abortion rights, while Trump has congratulated himself on the decision of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, which confirmed that women have the right to abortion nationwide.

Women at the Harris rally at the military base in Arizona told the BBC that the numbers this year were even higher. The state has a question on the ballot that would allow voters to decide whether the right to abortion should be enshrined in the state constitution. Abortion is currently illegal after 15 weeks, with few exceptions.

Mary Jelkovsky hopes that getting abortion on the ballot here in Arizona can help bring a blue tide.

Wearing a blue shirt that read “vote with your vag,” the 26-year-old told the BBC that she and her husband had started trying to conceive.

He says the idea that this could be forced on someone now that Roe v Wade has been overturned was hard to wrap his mind around.

Ms. Jelkovsky says the Supreme Court’s decision opened important conversations with her friends and family. She says she found out that many of her loved ones have had abortions, including life-saving ones.

He says: “It’s personal but it’s very important to have these conversations. “Ours [women]this election is not that important.”

Harris’ campaign hopes that the abortion issue will not only encourage Democrats to vote, but convince Republican women to take sides. These “silent” Harris voters, as political analysts like to call them, could help boost his numbers in tight races.

Arizonan Rebecca Gau, 53, was a lifelong Republican until Trump ran for president. When he voted for Joe Biden in 2020, he said it was a protest vote. But this time, he says he feels good about voting for Harris.

“I felt like she could represent me as a real American woman,” she told the BBC in early October.

She said she is tired of “toxic masculinity”, and she thinks other Republican women, like her, feel the same way.

“I don’t care what the political persuasion is – women are fed up,” she said.

But not all Republican women are convinced. Tracey Sorrel, part Texan BBC polling panelhe said he thinks Harris can take abortion rights far. In the end, although she didn’t like the rest of what he said, Ms. Sorrel said she would vote for Trump.

“I am not a voter. I am a voting principle. I don’t have to marry a man,” she said.

With additional reporting from Robin Levinson King and Rachel Looker