Do Women in Mega Cult Homes Have a Secret Vote Plan?

In 2022, Kansas Republicans thought they expected to easily win a referendum to undo the state constitution’s protection of abortion rights. They had cleverly scheduled the measure along with the state’s party primaries, figuring all the Republican primary voters would also approve the referendum. Polling predicted a landslide win in the first such referendum following the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade.

A week before that vote, I called Mike Caddell, a Kansan a radical leftist journalist friend who had twice run unsuccessfully as a Democrat for state representative in the heavily Republican rural county he grew up in, asking how that vote would go.

To my surprise, he predicted that the “No” vote would win big.

I asked what made him so confident, especially given the polls. He replied, “Well Dave, I’m pretty well known around here as an abortion rights advocate and everywhere I go, whether it’s the post office, the grocery store or the local liquor store, Republican women, most of them middle-aged or older, come up to me and say quietly, ‘Don’t let my husband know, but I’m voting against the proposed amendment.’”

When the votes were counted, Mike had called it. Kansas voters rejected the amendment to ban abortions in Kansas by a huge margin of 60% No to 40% Yes.

This happened in a state where Republicans represent 40% of the population and Democrats represent only 25% of the registered voters, with the rest unaffiliated.

I wondered whether this “secret women’s vote” phenomenon might also exist in rural Pennsylvania, a region quite similar politically and culturally to Kansas, and where Trump signs are ubiquitous while Harris signs are scarce and tend to vanish if displayed.

A local Democratic Party activist where I live in Upper Dublin stopped by a month ago to offer me some Harris signs. She expressed concern that Trump might win Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes and with them the election. I asked her about the possibility of there being a secret Republican women’s vote for Harris.

“Oh I think that is very possible,” she said, her mood immediately brightening. “I’ve done lots of election canvassing, and I’ve noticed if I go to a Republican household and a woman answers the door and starts discussing the election, often the man of the house steps into the doorway waving me away and saying something like, “No, no, no! We don’t want to talk with canvassers or pollsters.”

I suspect that people working the phones on all the polls this election season are running into the same problem. Imagine a pollster calling a Republican household and getting a woman on the line. In a reactionary MAGA household where the guy is the boss, will she provide an honest opinion aloud, or will she worry her husband might hear she’s planning to vote for Harris? My guess is that many such women would either not respond or would give the answer their husbands wants. Either way the poll would misrepresent that woman’s voting intention.

True, the Kansas referendum was exclusively about an abortion ban, while November’s election is about choosing a president. But it does pit Trump, a man with a history of misogyny, abuse and even rape, a gross record of cheating on his multiple wives and of bragging about crotch grabbing and who has boasted of having put the justices on the Supreme Court who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Meanwhile, his opponent Harris, the first woman vice president and potential first woman president, has been baselessly accused by him of using sex to advance herself politically. She is also an unflinching advocate of “trusting women” on abortion decisions.

If I’m right and if the Kansas abortion ban resolution’s crushing defeat is any indication, polls suggesting a tight Trump/Harris race in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and the other four swing states may be just as wrong as were the polls predicting a win for the Kansas abortion ban.

The post Do Women in Mega Cult Homes Have a Secret Vote Plan? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.