Why Women Voted For Donald Trump

Underneath a recent Instagram reel showing a pretty blonde proud Kamala Harris supporter wearing a T-Shirt emblazoned “WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS,” a caption stated:

“pink is optional voting is not! strut your way to the polls and VOTE like a woman!”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Rachel Martino (@rachmartino)

It’s typical to see women who are normally non-political share whom they’re voting for – if they’re voting Democrat, of course. Unless a woman is explicitly political on Instagram, she wouldn’t tell anyone she was voting for Donald Trump.

What was atypical, or at least unexpected, were the comments underneath the original post.

“Can’t wait until there’s an actual good female candidate worth voting for!!”

“would love to see a female president but not an incompetent one TY lol”

“I voted for the other one, and I am still very much a woman.”

Women were told since Kamala Harris became the last-minute Democrat presidential nominee that she was the obvious choice. Of course women should vote for her. How could any woman vote against another woman? Didn’t they want a woman president?

And of course, there was the long list of reasons why women shouldn’t – nay COULDN’T – vote for Donald Trump. Women everywhere were exclaiming that their daughters’ futures were on the line; they absolutely HAD to vote for Kamala to defend their daughters’ access to abortions; Donald Trump was a disgusting man who was literally Hitler, if you asked the mainstream media; Donald Trump was simply too evil to be in office, no matter what his actual policies were.

I’m sorry but this is mental illness.

You’re crying on camera because Trump, WHO IS PRO-CHOICE, might be President for the next four years and you’re scared that your little girl can’t get an ABORTION?!

Mental illness. It’s the only explanation. pic.twitter.com/twVXTEMEGO

— Samantha D. (@Prolife_Sam) November 5, 2024

And yet — women voted for Donald Trump.

The pressure exerted by the media, by influencers, by celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, amounted to nothing at all. Harris had the lowest turnout from women in the last three elections, lower than both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. 52% of white women voted for Trump.

What happened?

It turns out that women aren’t stupid enough to be swayed simply because another woman is running for the highest seat in the land. Women are not some faceless horde ready to fight for someone based solely on identity politics. Women weren’t convinced by a woman who was so bad at her job that she resorted to incoherent rambling and high-pitched cackling. And what the Democrats thought was a winning strategy — telling women not to think with their heads but to vote based off of hashtags like #imwithher — turned out to be an offensive joke.

This time, women voted for what they cared about. Women cared about their grocery bills. They cared about their daughters playing sports and entering bathrooms safely. They cared about crime rates. They cared about illegal immigration. And yes, they even cared about abortion – but perhaps less about ruining their daughters’ futures because they wouldn’t have access to on-demand abortions, and more about babies not being torn limb from limb in the womb.

Perhaps the fact that Kamala Harris was so bad at her job, so utterly irritating, allowed women to ignore the calls to vote for a woman, any woman, and instead look at the facts.

And the facts on the ground were clear —  a vote for Trump was a vote for women.

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Abby Roth is the creator of Classically Abby and The First-Generation Stay-At-Home Mom, a newsletter for all stay-at-home moms, but particularly for those who are the first in their families to take on the role of mother and caretaker as a full-time vocation. You can follow her on Instagram at @thefirstgensahm and on X at @classicallyabby.