As women outnumber men in early voting, Trump’s challenge to win over women voters comes into focus

When Alex Cooper, the popular podcaster behind “Call Her Daddy,” released his widely discussed interview with Democrat Kamala Harris last month, she revealed that she invited the vice president’s Republican opponent, Donald Trumpto appear on her show as well.

“If he also wants to have a meaningful and in-depth conversation about women’s rights in this country, then he’s always welcome on ‘Call Her Daddy,'” Cooper told millions of mostly female listeners.

The Trump campaign had received an offer to join the show, according to sources close to the former president, but ultimately decided to pass. Instead, Trump doubled down on his strategy of speaking directly to America’s youth by appearing on right-leaning, male-dominated online shows. He will wrap up his campaign on Tuesday, largely avoiding podcasts, YouTube channels and daytime TV shows geared toward female audiences.

And if Trump’s third bid for the White House isn’t enough, his approach to courting women — who far outnumber men and are more reliable voters — may be among the most scrutinized strategies of his campaign. Trump’s advisers and allies argued throughout the late summer and early fall that his appeal among men would make up for a lack of support from female voters, but in recent weeks, the expansion the gender gap caused alarm among some Republicans.

“We saw a women’s issue for all Republicans, up and down the ballot,” a Trump-aligned GOP operative told CNN. “Start at the top.”

Trump’s uncertainty about how to appeal to women was evident even in the final days of his campaign, leading to public disagreements with his staff over his messaging. At a rally in Green Bay, Wis., on Wednesday, he recounted the advice of aides who urged him to quit the repeated promise to be the “protector” of women because they found it inappropriate.

“‘Sir, please don’t say that,'” he said he was advised. “Why? I’m the president. I want to protect the women of our country. Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them,” Trump told the crowd.

The Harris campaign quickly took advantage of the remarks, linking the clip to Trump’s anti-abortion statements in a video that has garnered more than 2.4 million views on X. Harris followed up highlighting the comments during a brief and rare press conference and later at a rally in Reno, Nevada, where she said Trump “simply does not respect women’s freedom or women’s intelligence to make decisions about their own lives.”

Her campaign also criticized Trump for saying Thursday that former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would work on “women’s health” in a second Trump administration.

Understanding division

Behind the scenes and on the phone with close allies, Trump will ask why women don’t like him, three sources familiar with the conversations said.

“He believes women want someone to keep them safe. Keep their kids safe,” one of the sources said.

In North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump asked women in his audience if they wanted him to protect them. He seemed delighted by the cheers he received.

But beyond his rallies, women don’t seem to respond to the former president’s attempts to reach them. The most recent ABC News/Ipsos National Poll showed Trump trailing Harris among likely female voters by 14 points — a margin that far exceeds his 6-point lead among men.

Adding to Trump’s challenges is a gender gap in early voting. In the seven most contested battleground states, women have cast 55 percent of the vote so far, while men make up 45 percent, according to Catalist, a Democratic-aligned data firm. That 10-point gap representing nearly 1.4 million ballots, though slightly smaller than it was four years ago, still worries Trump’s allies.

“Early voting was disproportionately female,” Charlie Kirk, president of Turning Point Action, a conservative group responsible for much of Trump’s field strategy, posted on X. “If the men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.”

In a statement to CNN, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Harris “may be the first female vice president, but she has implemented dangerously liberal policies that have left women worse off financially and much less safe than we were four years ago under President Trump.”

“Women deserve a president who will secure our nation’s borders, remove violent criminals from our neighborhoods and build an economy that helps our families thrive — and that’s exactly what President Trump will do,” Leavitt said.

The right call

For a while, the Trump campaign expected they could win over women on key policy issues, particularly the economy, crime and Trump’s vow to bar transgender women from competing in women’s sports. However, the race for women’s votes became more complicated once Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, energizing female voters and leaving Trump to seek a new approach.

For the past two weeks, the campaign has hosted a women’s tournament with several top allies. Those events will continue into the weekend with popular Trump supporters including Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and former race car driver Danica Patrick. At a recent town hall on Fox News with an all-female audience — an apparent attempt to pander to concerns — Trump called himself the “father” of IVF, a claim Democrats scoffed at.

The Trump campaign and Republican supporters sought to take offense Thursday, seizing on remarks made by businessman Mark Cuban, a prominent pro-Harris voice, who told ABC’s “The View” that the former president shuns “strong women and intelligent”. Top Republican lawmakers and Trump’s female staff, including his campaign manager Susie Wiles, denounced the remarks on social media.

Trump also relied on other white men to reach female voters. Senior advisers had hoped for a boost from the endorsement of Kennedy, who left Trump on the campaign trail and is expected to be with the former president throughout Friday. The hope was that Kennedy could reach a subset of women, particularly health-conscious mothers, who distrusted government and the medical industry. Women were more likely to support Kennedy than men, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, although other polls showed no significant difference.

Trump’s challenges with female voters stretch back to his first term, when college-educated women began drifting away from him, leading to Democratic gains in the House in the 2018 midterms. of Roe v. Wade in 2022, a decision Trump once celebrated, only deepened women’s resistance to his platform. He has tried to moderate his stance — taking credit for the court’s decision while distancing himself from the state’s strict abortion laws that followed that ruling — but polls haven’t shown it to be effective. His selection of Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who once said abortion should be “nationally illegal,” as his running mate only kept the issue front and center.

Trump’s the inability to fit the deep demarcation of the country proved unsustainable this summer. Forced to pick a side on a measure to expand abortion access in his home state of Florida, Trump at first hinted that he supported it. The return from the right was swift and severe. Leading women in the anti-abortion movement have threatened to withdraw their support from Trump and have given permission for others to do the same.

At the risk of losing women from his base, Trump backed down. He made it clear that he intended to vote against Florida’s amendment, effectively siding with the six-week abortion ban. The episode gave Democrats new firepower for one of the most effective fundraising and mobilization messages against the former president.

An opportunity for Harris

An appearance on “Call Her Daddy” may not have solved Trump’s longstanding challenge with female voters. But his decision to avoid such platforms left Harris with a prominent opening.

During her podcast appearance, she warned listeners about the potential rollback of rights under a second Trump term, saying, “The fight for reproductive freedom is, at its core, about the basic right that every individual has has to make decisions about his own body. .”

Leavitt did not respond when asked why Trump did not accept the “Call Her Daddy” invitation. Representatives for Cooper, the podcast host, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Meanwhile, Trump has suddenly gone the other way, remaining confined to a similar universe of online pranksters and cultural influencers: Canadian pranksters known as the Nelk Boys, comedians Theo Vonn and Andrew Schulz, wrestler Mark Calaway aka The Undertaker, YouTube star turned boxer Logan Paul, LIV golfer Bryson DeChambeau, former NFL stars Will Compton and Taylor Lewan, and video game streamer Adin Ross.

The final appearance of his podcast tour came in October when Trump he sat down for a three-hour interview with comedian and actor Joe Rogan, host of one of the most popular shows on the Internet.

The appearance provided the desired result for the Trump campaign — an extended performance in front of Rogan’s massive audience — and Harris faced pressure to join Rogan’s show in Austin. Rogan recently disclosed that his team discussed the idea with the Harris campaign, but they did not agree on the duration or where to record it.

But Trump resisted opportunities to branch out. He also did not appear on the campaign trail alongside his main GOP rival, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who captured a significant chunk of Republican voters over the winter and spring. The Trump campaign was in talks with Haley’s team earlier this month to send her on the runway with the GOP nominee, but a Trump aide told CNN it was unclear whether such a joint appearance would ultimately come together before on election day.

Hayley said Fox News this week, she hasn’t spoken to Trump since June but remains willing to engage.

Instead, the Trump campaign has once again re-engaged in its approach with a male-dominated rally at Madison Square Garden which drew criticism for speakers’ misogynistic attacks on past and present female opponents of the former president.

“This is not the time for them to get too manly with this bromance thing that they have,” Haley said in response to the New York rally. “Fifty-three percent of the electorate are women. Women will vote. They care about how they are spoken to and they care about issues. This is a time of discipline and this is a time of addition.”

CNN’s Elizabeth Wagmeister, Ethan Cohen, Matt Holt and Molly English contributed to this report.

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