Almost every path to victory for the president Joe Biden relies on strong support from women. But his current standing among women is the weakest lead a Democrat has had since 2004, a key factor in how tight the race is.
Biden’s lead among women has fallen to about 8 percentage points since the 2020 election, according to an average of more than 30 polls conducted over the past six months and compiled by The New York Times. That’s down from a lead among women of about 13 percentage points four years ago.
And since the 2020 election, former President Donald TrumpSupport among men has recovered and is back to the double-digit lead it had in 2016.
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Republicans have generally led among men in most presidential elections going back decades. But every year that Democrats have won the presidency, they have led by more women.
The decline in support for Biden was especially pronounced among Black and Hispanic women, according to a new series of polls targeting women across the country and in Arizona and Michigan from KFF, a nonprofit organization focused on health care research.
The surveys show that even though abortion and democracy are key issues for a small but meaningful segment of women, concerns about inflation still play a more central role in the race and benefit Trump.
In states where abortion is on the agenda, however, the KFF polls provide some evidence for the Democratic theory that the issue will be a motivating factor pushing women to vote.
Biden’s support among women is still slightly more resilient than his support among men, which has continued to decline, especially among young men and men without college degrees. And Democratic strategists insist that traditionally Democratic constituencies, including women and Black voters, will return to Biden’s side as the race progresses.
Yet Biden’s current struggles with black and Hispanic women are particularly striking. He wins among Black women in the KFF poll by 58 percentage points, but that represents a significant drop from his 86 percentage point margin among Black women in the run-up to the 2020 election, according to a New York Times/Siena College average polls from that election. Biden’s lead among Hispanic women has also shrunk significantly, to about 12 points. The survey found that Biden’s lead among women totaled four points.
“Once the campaign kicks into high gear, abortion will galvanize women again,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has studied women’s voting behavior for decades. “And as much as Trump wants to right-size himself, he can’t stop himself from bragging about how he overturned Roe v. Wade.”
In states like Arizona, where abortion has been restricted and could be put to a vote in the fall, Democratic women were more motivated to vote than in states where access to abortion was not at risk, the survey found. KFF. There was no difference in motivation among Republican women.
In Michigan, which voted to affirm abortion rights in 2022, Biden is performing slightly worse among women than in Arizona, noted Ashley Kirzinger, the associate director for polling at KFF.
“It’s not just that Biden is more popular in Arizona — he’s not,” Kirzinger said. “Michigan women are no longer concerned about abortion access, and Biden is doing even worse in that scenario.”
Abortion-oriented voters tend to be younger and whiter than women in general, KFF polls show. They approve of Biden’s handling of abortion and would like to see him re-elected.
But the much larger group of women who say inflation is essential to their right to vote could decide this election.
“Women are not single-issue thinkers,” said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster, former Trump campaign manager and co-author, with Lake, of a book detailing women’s political desires. “That’s why they’re not single-issue voters.”
“Joe Biden and the Democrats only seem to be talking to women from the waist up, as abortion is the only issue Joe Biden has a lead on in the polls,” Conway added.
Inflation voters are more likely to be black or Hispanic than women overall. They are more likely to be middle-aged. In Michigan, nearly 60% of Black women say inflation is the most important issue on their ballot. A similar share of Hispanic women in Arizona say the same. For these women, inflation blows all other problems out of the water.
Overall, twice as many women say they were better off financially under Trump, the KFF surveys show. Young women, a key constituency that Democrats hope to retain this cycle, were nearly three times as likely to say things were better for them financially under Trump than Biden. Yet 41% of young women said there was no difference in their financial situation between the two candidates. Half of black women also said there was no difference.
This trend of democratic success among women is relatively modern. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and then George HW Bush won majorities among both men and women. But over the past two decades, it has been rare for a Democrat to get below double digits against women. The last Democrat to end a campaign with a single-digit lead among women was John Kerry in 2004.
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