Trump has a women problem, and he cannot rely on ‘bros’ to turn out for him either

Women turning out in huge numbers to vote early fuels optimism in the Harris camp amid former president’s macho campaign

With just days to go to polling day, Donald Trump is denying he has a problem with women. At his latest rally in Gastonia in North Carolina on Saturday afternoon, Trump declared with typical bombast to the cheering crowd: “Women love me.”
Alas for the one-time president, the evidence is starting to suggest otherwise. Kamala Harris has, according to current polling, a lead among women of 14 points, outstripping the six-point lead Trump has among men.
More problematic for Trump is that women are turning out in huge numbers to vote early, fuelling optimism in the Harris camp that the White House is within her grasp and plunging Trump and his aides down the rabbit hole of voter fraud.
The Trump campaign has largely eschewed women. 
Key members of Trump’s team are unashamed “bros” like Elon Musk, who was criticised for offering to impregnate “childless” Taylor Swift earlier in the campaign.
Nikki Haley, the last Republican candidate to drop out of the primaries, had offered up an olive branch and her campaigning services, which have been rebuffed. Ms Haley told Fox news she hadn’t spoken to Trump since June.
She has been highly critical of the macho campaign run by the Trump team that includes the former president discussing the size of the golfer Arnold Palmer’s manhood and at the same rally calling his opponent a “sh—t vice-president”. 
Trump has appeared on a series of podcasts with hyper masculine men while the wrestler Hulk Hogan, perhaps his most famous celebrity backer, has repeatedly ripped off his shirt on the campaign trail. The infamous Madison Square Garden rally was roundly condemned as both racist and misogynist. Grant Cardone, a Trump supporting businessman, implied Ms Harris was a prostitute, declaring: “Her and her pimp handlers will destroy our country.”
Ms Haley, whose support among republicans the Harris campaign has been targeting, said last week: “This bromance and masculinity stuff, it borders on edgy to the point that it’s going to make women uncomfortable. That is not the way to win women. That is not the way to win people who are concerned about Trump’s style.”
Megyn Kelly, the right-wing commentator and loyal Trump cheerleader, has warned him against “alienating” the female vote.
“I am telling you, even for me — and I voted for Donald Trump last week — it was too bro-tastic,” she said on her Megyn Kelly Show on YouTube with 2.7 million subscribers, “You’re trying to win an election in which you’re haemorrhaging female voters. Maybe when you present in front of hundreds — thousands at least in Madison Square Garden, you clean up the bro talk just a little so you don’t alienate women in the middle of America who are already on the fence about Republicans.”
The early turnout is problematic for Trump. Although Republicans in the past have tended to be more likely to vote on the day, this time around the Trump camp has been urging his supporters to get out early.
The University of Florida’s Election Lab, a well-respected academic research unit, has found women outvoting men by 10 points in states where early voting data by gender is available.
In the swing state of Georgia, where more than four million people had already voted by Saturday morning, women outnumbered men by 12 percentage points, a huge margin in what’s being billed by pollsters as the tightest of elections.
The Election Lab data shows that out of a little over four million ballots already cast, more than 2.2 million women have voted – 55.6 per cent of the total. In contrast, half a million fewer men have voted early in Georgia, accounting for 43.5 per cent of turnout so far. That’s a gender gap of 12 per cent in favour of women – and by extension very good news for the Democrats.
In North Carolina, another swing state and another where official figures are available on the gender of early voters, almost 2.2 million women have already voted compared to a little over 1.7 million men – a gender gap of 10.5 per cent in favour of women.
It’s the same story in Michigan, one of the three Rust Belt states that pollsters say is too close to call and which Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 but Joe Biden gained four years later. Out of 2.6 million early mail-in ballots, women account for 1.4 million – or 55.0 per cent, a 10.6 per cent lead over male voters.
According to The Election Lab, almost 73 million Americans have already voted with the Nov 5 election just three days out.
Pollsters and analysts are finding similar results, from sampling early voter returns. In the critical swing state of Pennsylvania – which both sides desperately need to win to reach the White House – women are outvoting men early by 14 percentage points, according to targetSmart, a Democrat-aligned political data specialist.
Polling suggests Trump has a six-point lead over Ms Harris among male voters but Ms Harris leads him by 14 among women. Among younger women, aged 18 to 39, her lead is a whopping 34 percentage points. Trump leads by plus five among men aged 18 to 39.
The early numbers – given Trump’s well-documented problems with female voters – is clearly causing alarm among close aides and allies.
Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, a Right-wing student pressure group with a huge following among young, disaffected men, signalled his deep concerns over current trends. “Early vote has been disproportionately female,” he wrote, “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple. If you want a vision of the future if you don’t vote, imagine Kamala’s voice cackling, forever. Men need to GO VOTE NOW.”
Trump has had offers to appear on female-friendly platforms but has largely declined. Alex Cooper, the podcaster behind Call Her Daddy podcast, invited Trump on after Ms Harris’s successful outing but talks fell through with the ex-president seemingly reluctant to commit to an interview outside his comfort zone.
Trump has been made aware of the problem but inevitably denies its existence. “I never thought I had a problem. But the fake news keeps saying women don’t like me,” he said at a rally in Pennsylvania before insisting to women voters: “ I am your protector.”
That speech caused internal rows inside the camp. At the rally in Gastonia, North Carolina on Saturday afternoon, Trump disclosed that advisers had told him not to repeat the claim because he had got “into so much trouble” over it. Aides told him it sounded “a little self-serving” but Trump keeps repeating his assertion. “Women have to be protected,” he told the cheering crowd.
He claimed “horrible people” – referring to the media – say he is “soft with women” but “very good with men”. But he insisted “women love me”.
At a separate rally in Salem, Virginia on Saturday, female Trump supporters admitted they were worried the former president had spent too much time courting the male vote.
Amy Powers, 18, from Roanoke, Virginia said she is casting her first ever vote for Trump because of her opposition to abortion.
Reflecting on his campaign she said: “There could have been some better things because Trump did kind of focus just on men.”
Alyssa White, 58, a business owner from North Carolina told The Telegraph: “I do think he could have had Haley out more,” referring to Ms Haley, Trump’s challenger for the Republican nomination earlier in the year, who has been largely absent from the campaign trail.
Ricky Westmoreland, 51, posited however that the media’s coverage of women supporting Harris and men supporting Trump is misleading.
“I know that the women who interview him on TV [don’t like him], but I haven’t met more than a handful of women who don’t.
“If you look around, there’s plenty of women here who support him. They all vote.”
The early turnout numbers appear to be spooking Trump. Axios, the political website, alleges that Trump’s “anxiety is evident” beneath the brash exterior visible at his marathon rallies. The former president has been making relentless early and late night calls to aides, according to Axios, “in which he peppers them with questions on how things are going — and whether they think he’ll win”.
He and his supporters are already paving the way for a Stop the Steal campaign, similar to the one in 2020 that sparked the Jan 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill. Elon Musk, among others, have been pointing to the betting market and partisan polling that has put him in front  and ahead of where he was in 2016 and 2020. That expectation, reports the New York Times “sets the stage for disbelief and outrage… should he lose”. 
Trump has repeatedly talked of election fraud at his most recent rallies. He is already calling the Democrats “a bunch of cheats”. If women lose it for him, expect the rhetoric to be turned up several notches come Tuesday evening and in the days after.