Republicans Need to Win Women Voters, Not Blame Them

Following last week’s elections, some conservatives have decided that the main “problem” in America is women voting Democrat. Some influencer voices have even called for repealing the 19th Amendment. This strategy is both wrong and defeatist. The right needs to win women’s votes, not silence them.

It is certainly true that women, especially young women, have tilted far to the left in recent years. But lashing out at these voters rather than seeking to understand what motivates them to vote for candidates who seem to jeopardize women’s safety and opportunity is a losing approach.

The outcomes on November 4 in New Jersey, New York City, and Virginia were not good for Republicans—and a lot worse for the people living there. They should not, however, have been a complete surprise. All three states are still blue—even Virginia, where incumbent Governor Glenn Youngkin’s victory in 2021 (the first Republican to win statewide there since 2009) appears like the exception rather than the rule.

One reason for the losses is that there was no Donald Trump at the top of the ticket. Another is that blue states have continued to see Republicans emigrating to red states, where they find a friendlier regulatory and business climate, and they can put aside worries such as men invading women’s sports and locker rooms and the state government secretly “transitioning” their children.

Yet, despite the realities of off-year elections and the continued Big Sort going on in this country, some conservatives have latched on to the exit polling data showing that women, especially young women, drove the results in this election. Natalie Sandoval at The Daily Caller wrote a column titled, “Unhappy With Election Results? Blame Women.”

Sandoval observes that in the 18-29 age group, young women of all races voted 81 percent for Democrat Mikie Sherrill as governor of New Jersey and 84 percent for Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor. Similarly, CNN exit polls in Virginia show that Democrat Jay Jones trounced incumbent state Attorney General Jason Miyares among women by 12 points (55-43) even though he lost men by 18 (58-40).

Of course, it is true that Republicans have problems with women—at least single women. The 2022 midterm elections showed the same patterns that have held in the past. The international phenomenon of women moving far to the left even as young men move to the right was evident there as well, but married women voted 52-46 for the GOP.

Though I have not seen any data breaking down the electorate by marriage (and Sandoval doesn’t cite any), it is a safe bet that a similar pattern held true for this election. To her credit, what Sandoval does cite at the end of her article is the data showing that young men also voted for the Democrats in each of the big races, albeit not in the same ratios. Male voters aged 18-29 gave Abigail Spanberger 58 percent of their votes in the Virginia governor’s race. In New Jersey, they voted 57 percent in favor of Mikie Sherrill. In New York, they gave Zohran Mamdani a whopping 67 percent of their votes.

Sandoval’s method of dealing with this uncomfortable data is to suggest, citing Helen Andrews’s viral recent essay, that Americans are dealing with a feminized society in which men think like and vote like women.

Maybe.

A better way to think about these elections is to recognize yet another aspect of blue states: they are filled with very recent immigrants who have come from countries with no understanding or appreciation of the American experiment and what it requires for success.

Florida conservative political operative Christina Pushaw emphasized on X that the push to blame women is just not accurate in a place such as New York, where there are around 1.8 million single women but 3.1 million immigrants. In that city, 62 percent of foreign-born voters pulled the lever for Mamdani while only a minority of native-born women did so. Pointing to Pew data, she noted that white women—who are often vilified by conservatives especially—have voted for Trump nationally in the last three elections.

None of this is to suggest that no problem exists for conservatives or our country as single women turn left. It is a big problem. However, writing articles that “blame women” for results that would have been the same even if women had not voted is also not helpful.

There is no need to pander to women. There is a need to reach them and convince them, however. And what one sees in various parts of the right is guaranteed not to convince them at all. Calling to repeal the 19th Amendment is only going to further alienate women.

If one wanted to amend our voting to make sure voters are properly incentivized to care about the nation, one could push for a return to requirements to vote, such as property ownership, military service, or even having children (although those limits have some glaring flaws as well). Remember that universal suffrage for men is a recent concept, too.

Conservatives shouldn’t blame women. They should be courting them.

Conservatives can, for instance, do a better job of highlighting how Democrat policies disadvantage and even endanger women. The brutal killing of Iryna Zarutska earlier this year by a repeat violent offender who never should’ve been on the streets is evidence enough of that. Every day in blue states, girls are having athletic opportunities stolen from them by boys because liberal politicians indulge the delusions of transgender ideology. Women can’t even walk into the locker room at a gym without worrying if they will be face-to-face with a naked man.

Meanwhile, liberal ideology pressures women and girls to forgo family life and motherhood in pursuit of career ambitions, demonizing one of the greatest joys of womanhood.

That’s what conservatives should be focused on. Rather than castigating women for the choices they make in the voting booth, an infinitely more effective strategy is giving them better reasons to vote Republican.

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (Twitter) @davidpdeavel.