USA TODAY International Edition
How white women see Trump in key states
Both campaigns know women are key to win
It is no secret to the campaigns of Joe Biden and Donald Trump that the road to the White House runs through places like Michigan’s Macomb County.
It is a swing county in one of a trio of recently reliably Democratic states – Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin – that shocked Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign by breaking for Trump after backing Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
The county, a suburban and exurban area north of Detroit, is the state’s thirdmost populous. Eighty percent of its residents are white. Roughly a quarter of adults have college degrees. The median household income in 2018 was about $ 60,000. Voters there cast ballots at higher rates than the country overall. It is a bellwether that backed the candidate elected president all but three times in the past 50 years.
Simply put, Macomb County is chock- full of people whose demographic and political profiles make them highly sought- after by political strategists from both parties.
In the 2020 White House race, top polls show that Biden is widening his lead over Trump in Michigan. The presi
dent’s reelection campaign has stopped buying television and radio ads in the state, and studies indicate that white suburban and working- class women are more likely to be having second thoughts about Trump than their male counterparts. Nevertheless, interviews late last month with nearly two dozen Macomb County women fitting this profile show that right now, in this swing county in this swing state, neither candidate has a lock.
As Kristina Gallagher, a 36- year- old married mother of two, put it: “I’m a realist. I’m going to vote for the person who is going to do the best for us.”
Gallagher is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, voting for Obama in 2008, Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 and Trump in 2016. She is a waitress who, for the first time in a decade, has a little money in the bank and wants a president focused on jobs, health insurance and education. Will she vote for Trump again?
“He’s been a little iffy lately, can’t keep his mouth shut. He’s derogatory sometimes and it really irks me. Maybe stay off Twitter,” Gallagher said as she loaded groceries, and her daughter, into the car outside a Walmart in Roseville. What about Biden?
“Not sure,” Gallagher said.
Microcosm of a microcosm
Winning presidential elections is a complex alchemy of driving up turnout among your base and winning over an ever- shrinking pool of persuadable or swing voters, a calculation complicated even further by geography.
To win in November, Biden must energize the younger, more diverse and urban voters that make up the backbone of the Democratic Party while also making inroads with white suburban and workingclass voters in key states. Trump must animate the older, whiter, less educated and more rural voters that are the foundation of the Republican Party while also holding on to the type of suburban women who backed him in 2016 but deserted the party in the 2018 congressional elections.
Then there’s the geography. There are 538 electors, and to win, a candidate must get at least a majority, or 270 electoral votes, in the mostly winner- take- all system. Michigan has 16 electoral votes, Wisconsin has 10 and Pennsylvania 20. In 2016, Trump captured all three and beat Clinton 304 to 227.
“If just 40,000 people across Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania had changed their minds, I would have won,” Clinton later wrote in her book, “What Happened.”
If Michigan is treated by analysts as a microcosm of white, suburban or working- class voters in manufacturing- rich areas of America, Macomb County is a microcosm of Michigan.
Trump visited Macomb County repeatedly as a candidate in 2016. When Clinton campaigned in the state, she largely stuck to Detroit or Flint. Trump beat Clinton by just 10,700 votes in Michigan, but he won Macomb County by 48,300 votes.
Kateri Shue, 32, is a mother of two in Mount Clemens who registered to vote for the first time four years ago so she could back Bernie Sanders “to be part of a revolution.” Shue voted for Clinton and is “pretty certain” she will vote for Biden in November. She has become politically engaged on social media but has not noticed her friends or family members changing their minds about the president – or at least not yet.
Why are Macomb County voters so swingy? “It just depends on who is available and if they feel it’s an important election to vote in,” Shue said.
Democrat on this, Republican on that
The Trump and Biden campaigns know that support from women will be key to their chances in November.
Trump has boasted, at times erroneously, about his support among women, saying that 52% of them voted for him. Initial 2016 exit polls showed that roughly 52% of white women chose Trump, but women overall preferred Clinton. A more reliable survey of validated voters showed that about 47% of white women backed the president.
The key to winning over Shue’s demographic is creating pathways for women who have already made their decisions to talk about it with their friends, families and co- workers – a persuasion tactic that resonates with women specifically, according to strategists.
Some of Trump’s most effective surrogates are women, including his daughterin- law Lara Trump. The Women for Trump bus tour made an early stop last month after a coronavirus- related hiatus in neighboring Wisconsin. Trump’s female backers in Michigan say their support for the president is under- reported. Republican National Committeewoman Kathy Berden of Michigan said recently that she believes the polls about Trump’s chances in the state are wrong again.
Biden is likewise “working to earn every single vote in Michigan, and a huge part of that is speaking to women in the suburbs,” said Rose Dady, the campaign’s director of coalitions in Michigan.
With the pandemic, neither candidate is campaigning in person much, but both have had virtual events aimed at women, often featuring their female surrogates.
Sarah Stecker, a 37- year- old teacher and married mother of two, said Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate she supported.
“I have to separate who he is from the job that he’s doing,” said Stecker, who generally approves of the president.
Stecker’s friend Kathy Parada, a thirdgrade teacher, described her political leanings as: “I’m Democrat on this, but I’m Republican on this.” The 45- year- old married mother of two voted for Trump because she felt the country was “financially damaged” and needed a leader with business chops, despite what she called Trump’s “vomit of the mouth.”
“He may not say it in the right way, but I know where he’s trying to go with it,” Parada said. “He doesn’t support educators enough, but as a parent, I’m looking at what is going to be good for my kids’ future.”
Does that mean she will support him again? “It’s looking that way,” she said.