President Trump has a woman problem: Too few of them want to vote for him in 2020, and it could prove fatal, according to fresh national poll.
Women vote in higher numbers, per capita, than men. And, contrary to Trump’s confidence that he is in good shape with women, or at least, that he will be, the polling suggests he has work to do.
In the latest Quinnipiac survey, 60 percent of female respondents said they would “definitely not vote” for Trump next year, versus just 27 percent who said they would “definitely vote” for the president and 10 percent who said they would “consider” supporting him.
“Trump has always done better, in many cases, depending on the issue, with men [versus] women,” Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, told the Washington Examiner on Friday.
Among men, 34 percent said they would “definitely vote” for him in 2020, with 46 percent saying they would “definitely not vote” for him, according to the Quinnipiac survey.
The poll of 1,358 registered voters was conducted from March 21–25, as news was breaking and later confirmed that Trump was essentially cleared of conspiring with Russia during the 2016 campaign. The survey’s margin of error was 3.3 percentage points.
The president’s job approval rating hasn’t changed much in the days since special counsel Robert Mueller concluded his investigation and submitted his report to the Department of Justice. Trump’s approval rating in the Quinnipiac poll was 39 percent, slightly below what he has averaged over the past year in various polls.
Still, Malloy cautioned that the impact of the Mueller report on Trump was unclear. “The fast breaking [news] in this admin can swing people one way or the other pretty quickly, and the Mueller report might win him back people who were leaning away from him,” he said.
Trump’s weakness with women has been a constant throughout his tenure, particularly college-educated women in the suburbs. It was a key factor in the Republican Party losing its majority in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections.
Per Quinnipiac, 50 percent of college-educated voters said they would “definitely not vote” for Trump in 2020, with an equal percentage of white women overall saying the same. Among independents, another critical bloc, 54 percent said they would “definitely not vote” for the president.
During a campaign rally Thursday in Grand Rapids, Mich., Trump predicted women voters would come around. “I think we’re going to do better with women now, because you know what? I produced — because women filled more than 60 percent of all new jobs created last year,” Trump said. According to exit polls, the president garnered 41 percent of the female vote three years ago.
