Donald Trump made headlines last week for suggesting that women who procure abortions should receive “some sort of punishment.” The statement, a repudiation of the pro-life ethos and of the enforcement of abortion laws before Roe v. Wade, was duly walked back by Trump’s campaign. Then over the next few days, the Republican presidential front-runner cycled through several positions on abortion, leaving just about everyone certain only that Trump knows little about the issue and is willing to say whatever pops into his mind at any given time.
Trump’s comments on abortion, as well as several other incidents that made him appear anti-woman, led many political pundits to predict that Republican women in Wisconsin would abandon him at the ballot box. As one columnist put it: “Donald Trump’s demonizing of women likely to cost him in Wisconsin primary.” In fact, it took just a day or two before Trump’s abortion comments were being used as attack ad fodder.
Causation is notoriously difficult to prove (and disprove). But based on exit polling, Trump’s remarks didn’t seem to have hurt him especially with Wisconsin women. Or at least, they didn’t hurt him with women any more than they hurt him with men.
CNN exit polls show Trump won 35 percent of women voters Tuesday — the same share he won among men in the exit polls. That’s actually the first time Trump has not experienced any gender gap in exit polling. In nearby Iowa, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, all of which voted before the incidents mentioned above, Trump won equal or smaller shares of the female vote — 24, 35, 29 and 32 percent, respectively — and did better with men by 1, 8, 16 and 7 points, respectively.
None of this is to suggest that female voters are warming to Trump. A recent Wall Street Journal poll suggests that half of Republican women simply won’t vote for him even if he is their party’s nominee. A March CNN/OCR poll found that nearly three-quarters of women have a negative view of Trump, up from 59 percent in December. But the available evidence from Wisconsin doesn’t necessarily show Trump’s gender gap has gotten any worse.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
