Women are fuelling Kamala Harris’ late poll surge. They’re in for a nasty surprise

She is worse than a far-Left extremist. She’s a hollow opportunist who has flirted with radical views on trans

A blonde woman walks towards a polling booth, following the lead of her husband. Both are wearing baseball caps. Julia Roberts’s disembodied voice assures her that, “in the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want”. A jaunty tune plays as the woman fills in the bubble next to the Harris/Walz ticket. A knowing glance is shared with another woman, her obnoxious MAGA-coded partner none the wiser.
The latest Harris advert aimed at winning over moderate women – a solid Republican constituency, overwhelmingly white and suburban – was hardly subtle. But Democrats have good reason to believe 2024 is the year that the group could ditch Trump for good. While 53 per cent identify as Republican, an increasing proportion (especially those with college degrees) have voted Democrat in recent years. Indeed, the disastrous 2022 GOP midterm results have been linked to anger over the overturn of Roe flipping female voting patterns.
So, is there a secret blue wave on the horizon? At least one woman thinks so. J Ann Selzer, a legendary Iowa-based pollster with a near-impeccable record, released a poll on Saturday that placed Harris ahead of Trump by 3 points in the state. Iowa, in case you have forgotten, is not supposed to be a swing state: Trump handily carried it in 2016 and 2020.
Look at the margins for a clue as to why this election cycle might be different. According to Selzer, elderly women support Harris by a two-to-one margin, and independent women just slightly less. If accurate, moderate white women (and given Iowa’s demographics, they’re overwhelmingly likely to be white) will be voting for Harris at a higher propensity than elderly voters in California.
This is unlikely – even a pollster like Selzer isn’t infallible – but should still give pause for concern. Harris has clearly struck a chord with independents and moderate Republican women. Her campaign has taken great pains to avoid the topic of identity in contrast with Hillary Clinton’s incessant chatter over breaking this-or-that glass ceiling.
Harris can still benefit from a legitimate connection to “women’s issues”, though. She first reached national prominence by forensically questioning Brett Kavanaugh in his deeply contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearing after an allegation of sexual misconduct by a former acquaintance. And she spent much of her time as VP promoting abortion rights. That she was given the task by a recalcitrant Biden, keen to keep his bumbling deputy away from key policy priorities, clearly matters little.
But female voters could do with a reality check. Harris may struggle to improve access to sexual healthcare, given the troubles her party has had in agreeing whether “sex” is an acceptable concept at all. Palling around with Liz Cheney in 2024 doesn’t take away from the fact that Harris opened a 2019 CNN Town Hall by listing her pronouns (“she, her and hers”, in case you were wondering).
Harris has hardly made a peep about the plight of women’s sporting teams struggling to navigate trans-inclusive rules – strengthened under the current administration – that superseded their sex-based Title IX rights. Swimming has become a particular flashpoint, with superstar athlete Riley Gaines and recently the Roanoke college swim team expressing support for the Republican candidate. The Trump campaign, for its part, knows that Harris’ views on gender ideology are seriously damaging, explaining why it has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting them in TV adverts in the past month.
It’s certainly a rich seam to dig at. Moderate female voters might be interested to hear more about Harris’s big plans from her first presidential campaign. Take her suggestion that prostitution be decriminalised, for instance, or her open-ended pledge to “end” immigration detention.
Former prisoners – rapists and murders included – would have their voting rights restored, and the Senate filibuster abolished for the express purpose of passing Green New Deal legislation. Even today Harris has made no effort to distance herself from the radical wing of her party, gladly accepting the endorsement of AOC and using the independent socialist senator for Vermont Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail.
Harris shouldn’t just be dismissed as a far-Left lunatic. She’s much worse: a hollow opportunist. When the zeitgeist supported the populist Left, she would swear fealty to the sacred rite of granting sexual reassignment surgery to illegal migrants held in prison. When the arc of history bent towards Trump, she treated voters to tales of her loaded Glock. Trump might well be a macho dinosaur, but he has always stuck to his guns: his policy positions have hardly moved an inch from the 1980s. Should another “great awokening” rear its head, there’s no guarantee that Harris wouldn’t flip-flop back to the extremes, this time with the full powers of the presidency behind her.
Far be it for anyone to demand what a group should do with their vote, but women surely deserve better than Kamala Harris.