The 2024 election is now just weeks away, and I’m feeling pretty good about it. I like what I see happening in the polls, and I definitely think Donald Trump has the momentum right now. But is there reason to be concerned? Maybe there is. For all the talk about Trump making inroads with black and Hispanic voters, is he losing support from other demographics that could cost him the election?
Despite my confidence right now, he might be.
CNN’s polling expert, Harry Enten, has not been one to sugarcoat the polling numbers for the network’s Democrat-leaning audience. If numbers show Kamala in trouble, he won’t shy away from pointing it out.
But on Tuesday, he had some troubling numbers for Trump. Enten noted Trump is underperforming among white women, a critical voting bloc that makes up 36% of the electorate. This is a group that Trump has relied on in previous elections, but recent polling data suggests he has a big problem this year.
“Look at Romney,” Enten says, pointing to the GOP’s past performance with white women. “Romney won them by 9 [points].” In 2016, Trump managed to win them by 6 points, and in 2020, he slightly improved to a 7-point margin.
But now?
“Look how much lower Trump’s margin is among white women. He still leads, but it’s well within the margin of error. It’s just a point,” Enten notes, highlighting that Trump is currently doing 6 points worse than he did four years ago. This would make him the “worst-performing GOP candidate this century among white women.”
Why is this so significant? Enten explains that while Trump is making “massive gains among black men, black women,” those shifts pale in comparison to the sheer size of the white female voting bloc. “White women make up the plurality of the electorate—36%,” Enten says. Shifts in this group can “move the overall electorate more than ginormous shifts among a considerably smaller part of the electorate,” making this a major red flag for Trump’s campaign.
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Enten highlighted polling in key battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where voters are overwhelmingly white, and women are particularly concerned about abortion rights. “The percentage of women who say that abortion is the top voting issue come November: 27%,” Enten says, compared to just 7% of men. This gender gap is likely a response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, a ruling that has galvanized white suburban women against Republicans.
Enten went further, noting that this issue could be decisive in 2024.
“White women in the suburban areas, in these key battleground states, have very much turned against Republicans,” he says. Despite being a garbage candidate who can’t put two sentences together in a coherent way, Kamala Harris is performing better than any Democratic candidate this century among white women. “If she wins, it could ultimately be because she did so well with white women,” Enten said.
Harris is doing the best for a Democratic presidential candidate among white women in the 21st century... That's big cause they make up such a large chunk of the electorate...
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) October 15, 2024
Why is Harris doing so well? It would appear that abortion rights is a driving force... pic.twitter.com/zQHFifAwcf
Of course, while these numbers are concerning, polls still show Trump gaining momentum and leading in most of the battleground states. The question is, will the abortion issue result in a larger share of this voting bloc to the polls, overcoming Trump’s polling edge?
I can’t say that it will, but I wouldn't bet on it not being a factor, either. This voting bloc could be Donald Trump’s Achilles heel in the 2024 election, and if Kamala continues to gain ground here, it could spell trouble for his chances of reclaiming the White House.
