GOP pollster reveals what made women Trump voters 'totally freaked out' in focus group

[Tom of Temecula]

Republicans Voters Against Trump director Sarah Longwell said that she did a focus group with GOP women who voted for Donald Trump previously but who are now very afraid.

"I was recently in Arizona; this is the state where they recently repealed their abortion law which put into place an 1870 [sic] law that restricted abortion, even in the cases of rape, incest, and life of the mother," she explained. "These women were totally freaked out by what was happening when you talk about abortion." She explained that these voters understand the stakes at a very personal level. Three had abortions themselves, and a fourth had a "catastrophic health situation" in which "she was desperately afraid for her life."

Earlier this week, Trump made a comment to a local reporter saying that he was "looking at" a ban on contraception and said he would be announcing the specifics of his policy shortly. His campaign was quick to put out a statement saying that he "misspoke" and that he is not looking to ban birth control.

"So, that right now is the reason that Donald Trump and Republicans are struggling so much on this issue because they feel good when they get to sort of, you know, talk about the economy or immigration," Longwell explained. "They feel like they're on offense. But the second this issue comes up, it becomes a catastrophe with Republicans, especially with the group they are most vulnerable with, a lot of the college-educated, suburban women."

https://www.rawstory.com/republican-women/

[BoRaGard]

1. The danger of soul-sick patriarchal repube fascism is real

[brewens]

2. I'm waiting for another Bob Barr situation. He got busted by Larry Flynt for paying for his wife's abortion.

It's a just a matter of time before some woman connected to the anti-abortion crowd get ratted out for having an abortion. HIPAA won't protect them. There is too much incentive now for too many people to burn them. I worked for a blood center and never had any reason to grab and leak any donor information, but I could have any time I felt like it.

Larry, where are you now? Help us from the grave if you can! Your country needs you again.

https://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/01/12/flynt.01/

[Walleye]

4. The problem is, exposing the hypocrisy does no good. They're proud of it

I don’t know how you fight against religious fanatics, I really don’t.They can always say they’ve been born again, although they don’t require Trump to ask for forgiveness for all of his sins.

[NanaCat]

26. The experts on fighting against religious fanatics are

Atheists.

Might be a good idea to quit alienating us and call upon our expertise.

[Walleye]

31. I've been an atheist for 60 years at least. Not ashamed of it

[Caliman73]

23. Perhaps 20 to 30 years ago...

If you notice that in 1999 Fox News was about 3 years old, Limbaugh had been on the radio for maybe 6 to 10 years but was nowhere near his peak. The readily available commercial internet was barely 4 years old. Those were completely different times. Today, we have the ability to live our entire lives and never get any information that conflicts with our established beliefs. Conservatives seem especially vulnerable and willing to silo themselves, and yes I realize the irony of me writing this on Democratic Underground. However, I do check on right wing sources, and the mainstream media is a mixture of corporate ideas and some liberal ideas as opposed to the Conservative media which is propaganda all day everyday.

As others have said, Trump's base are inoculated against the facts. They see anything negative (factually based) as "fake news". Many Conservatives have also bought into the idea that "the rules are for other people", which is a very Conservative idea. "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."- Wilhoit

[NanaCat]

27. Please

Everything about conservatives was summed up by John Kenneth Galbraith over half a century ago:

The modern conservative is not even especially modern. He is engaged, on the contrary, in one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise which always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities.
in Harper's Magazine March 1964

[Caliman73]

29. Yes. Their ideology has not substantially changed...

since Edmund Burke and Joseph De Maistre were writing about what became modern Conservatism in the late 1700's. They were defending the ideas behind monarchy and aristocracy. Knowing that kings and queens were literally losing their heads, they sought to redefine but reinforce the ideas of natural hierarchy but without the absolute, hereditary aspect of it. Monarchy for a modern world of Capitalism. Naturally, WEALTH and business should decide, especially since the nobility already had a monopoly on Wealth.

They have always thought a certain special people should be allowed to live as they wish, even as they were trying to impose a more strict set of rules for the rest of us in order to maintain the "natural order" of things that funnily enough, favored them.

[keithbvadu2]

3. Control of women is their goal..

[Walleye]

5. Not just control, punishment. Cruelty is the point

[GB_RN]

16. Exactly.

To paraphrase computer programmer lingo, when it comes to the GOPQ, “cruelty is a feature, not a bug.”

[Marcuse]

6. Increasing their relative birth rate is the WN goal. The misogynistic collateral damage isn't even an afterthought.

[spudspud]

9. Nailed it. /nt

[hay rick]

7. Trump is "looking at" birth control...

Reminds me of how he was always looking at infrastructure week. The only criterion for this or any other issue is what's good for him. Republican women should be nervous.

[GB_RN]

17. And His BC Policy...

Which Agent Orange stated that he would be releasing, and which Cantaloupe Caligula says we should find interesting, will be just like his promised, amazing, wonderful healthcare plan to replace Obamacare: It will perpetually be coming “Soon!™️”

[et tu]

8. all women- unite and vote! nt

[OMGWTF]

12. BLUE!

[et tu]

13. most certainly

bluetiful tsunami

[calimary]

14. Women voters must never take our rights for granted.

That just makes it easier for some bedroom busybodies to come jackbooting into our lives to take those rights away.

[et tu]

20. and they will keep on trying

until we can stpp them~

[NoMoreRepugs]

10. Problem is the less educated portion of the population. Especially in rural areas.

No offense to any here who live in rural areas, but having spent a reasonable amount of time traveling for business or transitioning my wife’s family farm for sale they predominantly exist in a fact free zone.

[GB_RN]

19. As A Lifelong Resident Of Eastern NC...

I can verify this statement. The particular city I live is not a rural, agricultural/tobacco town anymore (as it was when I was a kid), it’s grown into an island of blue in a sea of ruby red. The majority of people in almost all the surrounding counties, and for that matter, most areas in my county which are outside the city limits, have been brainwashed into voting against their own self interests.

[angrychair]

11. According to the newest Cook poll

Their poll shows that people care more about economy and immigration, by a large margin, than they do about abortion/women's rights. (I would argue that isn't true based on midterm and special elections that have shown differently)
In fact the poll goes as far as showing that even women care more about immigration than they do abortion/women's rights (48% immigration vs 42% abortion)
In fact 55% of those polled support trump despite believing trump would ban abortion/women's rights nationwide.

https://www.cookpolitical.com/survey-research/2024-swing-state-project/unique-election-driven-traditional-issue

[BumRushDaShow]

15. They still haven't learned their lesson insisting on the veracity of their phony crap "polls"

and that includes the infamous "I'm done." guy.

It's an insult to women to keep pushing the nonsense.

Since Roe was overturned in June 2022, there have been 4 sets of primaries, generals, and odds & ends special elections (including referendums on reproductive rights), and EVERY ONE has defied the "pollsters" who claimed the subject wasn't "important", in both red and blue states.

Right now, multiple more states (I counted 11 so far) that allow the state Constitution amendment process to be put to voters, are due to vote on enshrining the right in November - https://19thnews.org/2023/12/abortion-states-election-2024-ballot-measures/

The states where abortion could be on the ballot in 2024

Grace Panetta
Political reporter

Published December 15, 2023, 6:00 a.m. ET
Updated May 20, 2024, 4:56 p.m. ET


Seven states have directly voted on abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022 — and abortion rights advocates are so far undefeated with ballot measures.

The most recent win came in November when Ohio became the latest state to vote to enshrine abortion rights in its constitution. Two blue state legislatures put abortion rights constitutional amendments on their 2024 ballots, while organizers in at least nine other states so far are leading citizen-driven efforts to put similar measures on the ballot.

The proposed amendments have the potential to reshape abortion access around the country and even mobilize voters behind Democrats in critical 2024 battleground states and races. Abortion rights ballot measures outperformed Democrats on the ballot in California, Michigan and Vermont in the 2022 midterms.

Currently, 23 states enable citizens to put constitutional amendments on the ballot, while others only allow a state legislature to put them before the voters. While not all ballot measures are necessarily constitutional amendments, most of the efforts in 2024 are behind reshaping state constitutions to enshrine reproductive rights.

(snip)

The states with upcoming referendums (upon state validation) - AZ, AR, CO, FL, MD, MO, MT, NE, NV, NY, SD.

[angrychair]

21. I don't disagree with you

Said as much in my post. I was also hesitant to post numbers, because I do question it's veracity, it's really the sentiment of the poll and how it's being reported. It plays into the false narrative being pushed by rightwing media and they and TSF's campaign, will prop up this poll hard.
In my normal interactions with people, both Dems and Rep, that are not nearly as politically aware as any of us on DU, I do see clear hints in my conversations that dovetail with some of the findings.
It calls back to the phenomenon of people "hating" Obamacare but there being unequivocally strong support, across all political stripes, for all the individual components that is "Obamacare".

So it's not about this poll or any poll, it's about the risks of political and economic ignorance.and misinformation, that could play a far more significant role then we anticipate in certain swing states where margins are already tight.

[BumRushDaShow]

22. I had replied to you because I did see that you had disagreed with the Cook take

My rant is more along what I have ranted about now many times - "the narrative". They take "polls" and form conclusions that they use to build a narrative about what they think will happen and assuming the info they had gathered is somehow "representative" of "reality". And it isn't.

Some of these "surveys"/"polls" are actually based on a subset group of people they selected and follow over time. They rarely or never change that group so they get the same results pretty much every year, regardless if the electorate might have changed. In other cases, they are "adjusting" their results to supposedly be "reflective" of the electorate, but those "adjustments" introduce all sorts of errors.

There needs to be a better way and that will be hard given how people are not as invested in responding to pollsters or surveys (except those who often have an agenda).

[angrychair]

24. Exactly

There needs to be a better way and that will be hard given how people are not as invested in responding to pollsters or surveys (except those who often have an agenda).

Exactly this. I absolutely believe that the type of people that would answer a phone poll in 2024 are not actually representative of the 2024 electorate.

I still believe there is a thread of concern there but as I've said, its nested more in political ignorance and misinformation, than genuine understanding of economy or politics.

[BumRushDaShow]

25. I *know* you might remember the days

where people would post threads here that said "Come on! Let's 'DU' this poll!", where a link to some online poll by "SurveyMonkey" or "YouGov", etc., was in the OP.

That type of thing is what is fueling some of the skew because there are little or no guardrails around that sort of thing, and bots can get around some of them to pump up the results (and now with this "AI" stuff, the bots can probably really circumvent the authenticity of the process).

[NanaCat]

30. Sigh

They don't have to answer the phone anymore. Really. One of the big polling firms contacted me by text. Another by voice mail. I responded to both. I took the text pollster's surveys online (yes, there was more than one). So, other than the initial texts and responses, everything I did was online, not over the phone. The voice mail response became the standard phone poll where I talked to a live person, same as I had with all the other polls I've done over the years.

So many people here seem to think pollsters still employ the same methods they used in the 80s...but they don't, because it would be stupid to do so. For instance, it's been at least 20 years since they conducted polls only by landline; today, they use landline contact only 20-25% of the time because--brace yourselves--around 20-25% of the population have only landline telecom access. Really!

Do they have to scramble when sudden major shifts in technologies or public opinion occur (such as the time bomb of Dobbs)? Always, but, eventually, they get the technology up to date and samples tweaked to reflect those changes. It doesn't happen overnight, but they get there eventually.

[angrychair]

33. The Cook Report

Doesn't get anymore specific than "completed the survey".
That said I would no more answer a text than a phone call from an unknown source. I would just bloke the text and move on without a second thought. To many scammers and spear phishing attacks to ever respond to a unsolicited text from an unknown source

[Always Blue]

18. 1950s

Women were thought to have no soul by the Catholic Church, until the 1950s. So if women died giving birth to a male with a soul that was alright. Religion has been the biggest perpetrator of atrocities against women.

[gay texan]

28. Well GOP women

You voted for it. You should be super duper happy!!!

But, if you'd like a way out, vote blue, no matter who.

[budkin]

32. We can win this election on this single issue

And we should take advantage.

[JCMach1]

34. Yep,.wait for the Women's Health ads

And the damage they do...

[Bucky]

35. Oh, those poor ladies. Who knew turning the clock back....

...on civil rights, workers' rights, migrants' rights, students' rights, and the right to freedom from poverty and want would somehow affect the healthcare rights of middle class women too? That's hardly fair!