The story of this election is the story of women’s anger
Yeah, of course, we are single-issue voters
On Sunday night, Selzer & Co., which conducts polls for The Des Moines Register, released a new poll showing Kamala Harris 3 points ahead of Donald Trump in Iowa.
Trump won Iowa in 2020 by 8 points (Selzer predicted 7) and in 2016 by 9. The state — which went for Obama in 2012 and 2008 — has been considered solidly red. And for good reason: Our governor is a Republican, as are our US representatives and senators. Our state legislature is GOP-controlled.
The new Selzer poll immediately made headlines. Republican strategist David Kochel tweeted “there is no way this is right,” specifically citing the poll’s finding that Trump is down 19 points among Iowa seniors.
Kochel failed to note that it wasn’t just the seniors; it was women. Senior women, specifically. Many of them had previously voted for Trump or for third-party candidates. The senior women polled were now, by a margin of more than two to one, supporting Harris – 63% to 28%. Iowa’s senior men also favored Harris, but by only 2 percentage points, 47% to 45%. Your grandmas and your moms are mad.
What could have changed in the time since the last Selzer poll?
The answer is hiding only if you don’t care about women. The answer is hiding only if you’ve dismissed women’s health care as a niche issue. For the rest of us, the answer is glaringly obvious.
It’s the abortion ban.
In June, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld a near-total abortion ban in the state.
The ban was only possible because the US Supreme Court, including three justices appointed by Donald Trump, overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Since then, a number of states have enacted abortion bans, resulting in the deaths of women who needed abortion care. Rates of maternal mortality have risen. Doctors are leaving these states. Iowa ranks 50th out of 50 states by ob-gyns per capita.
And while the average age of Iowans is 39.1, the 65+ age group grew the fastest between 2010 and 2022, increasing by 29.2%.
These are the Iowans who remember what life was like before Roe. In 2020, I spoke with Beverly Young, then 82, who had been a registered Republican. She told me what life was like in 1963 with three young children, begging her doctor for access to the pill. It was humiliating. She had a husband who wouldn’t wear a condom. She had to go to several different doctors to find one who wouldn’t ask her whether she had her husband's permission. She had to beg to be treated as an adult who could make her own choices. He’s now her ex-husband. But she never forgot the rage she felt at that time. And the shame.
Beverly worked as a bartender for 50 years and told me so many stories about women who weren't able to get birth control. She had a friend who was in a bad marriage, who self-induced an abortion and got an infection. She lived, but they don't talk about what happened. Another woman couldn't afford to have another baby and put hers up for adoption. And another woman whose fetus died inside the womb had to face a medical panel before she could get permission to get the fetus removed.
“She lived for days with that dead child inside her. Can you imagine?” Beverly said.
When Beverly told me her story, abortion bans were threats that Republicans kept making. They even passed some laws, only to have them overturned in court. Many political journalists in the state, my colleagues at the time, assured me there would never be a real abortion ban. That Republicans were just playing politics, just firing up their base. It’s easy to see why someone could be lulled into complacency. To let themselves be convinced that their rights would never be undermined.
In 2020, when I wrote about Beverly, a lot of people wrote to me that I was catastrophizing and that it would never happen. But it’s 2024. Iowa has one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the state. The time Beverly shared as a horrible memory is now our reality.
In the past four years, we’ve seen the violent reality of the campaign rhetoric. Our lives and our rights are not just a theoretical debate.
I am publishing this on Tuesday, the day of the election. I do not know how it will go.
I hope this anger has woken up voters. I hope that in this anger, we find hope. And I hope that this rage in America is turned upon the forces destroying us, rather than on ourselves and those around us.
This election cycle has been about gender. JD Vance reducing the value of a woman to the productivity of her uterus. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s full-throated embrace of reproductive rights. Bans targeting LGBTQ books and laws preventing minors from accessing gender-affirming care. And Project 2025, the conservative plan for America, lays out a world in which there is no social safety net, no-fault divorce, or abortion, just women doing the unpaid work of holding together the American family and economy. No matter how much it’s marketed as a trad wife fantasy, women like Beverly remember the bleak reality.
What the Selzer poll shows us is this untapped vein of female anger in America. The anger of women who remember what it was like to be treated under the law as second-class citizens; women who remember a time when they couldn’t take out a line of credit, when they had to beg condescending doctors at Catholic hospitals for the pill. The righteous fury of women who are seeing their daughters and granddaughters going septic in parking lots, without the choices for which their mothers fought so hard.
If this poll result is a surprise, it is because pundits and political analysts have not fully grasped that the right to abortion is the right of women to have autonomy and to be full participants in public life. It’s wild to see talking heads describe people who vote on abortion as single-issue voters. Yes, my guys, my life is the single issue I do vote on.
In Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, Soraya Chemaly writes, “Anger is the demand of accountability. It is evaluation, judgment, and refutation. It is reflective, visionary, and participatory. It's a speech act, a social statement, an intention, and a purpose. It's a risk and a threat. A confirmation and a wish. It is both powerlessness and power, palliative and a provocation. In anger, you will find both ferocity and comfort, vulnerability and hurt. Anger is the expression of hope.”
I hope this anger has woken up voters. I hope that in this anger, we find hope. And I hope that this rage in America is turned upon the forces destroying us, rather than on ourselves and those around us.
VOTE.
Election Day links
wrote about her fury today. predicted that women will save us. reminds us that all candidates, once elected, become our opponents. And “The work starts Wednesday. All I’m waiting to see is what kind of work is going to need to be done, and who is going to recognize that and roll up their sleeves or just relax back into business as usual?”In September
wrote about how to think about politics without killing yourself.I think a lot about a piece I wrote last year about hysterical women. And another piece where I pointed out that no one is coming to save us, we have to save ourselves.
And if you need something good, there are over 300 comments on my open thread about hope.
Also, remember today as you scroll the news, Nate Silver is a dingus.
Today at 1pm ET/12pm CT, Jessica Valenti and I will be doing a live video chat for paid subscribers.
And at 7pm CT, I will start an election night chat for subscribers to vent, find community, and watch the election results roll in.
It's simple: If you have control of your body, you are a person. I want to be a person.
I’m 61. I was 9 when we got Roe. I grew up in rural east Texas, and I recall clearly the day I became a feminist. I was sitting in class, trying to hide from the obnoxious football players in front of me. They were talking about another girl in school who had gotten pregnant and dropped out. They all called her a filthy whore and also bragged about how they had all had sex with her. The impotent blind rage I felt at that moment has powered me for 43 and a half years. I started volunteering for Democrats in 1982 and haven’t looked back.
What I need right now, though, is some reassurance that if things go sideways again we won’t give up. That if men fail us and vote for the nightmare in large numbers that we have plans to continue the fight. (I originally typed the cliche phrase “Plan B” there and then realized that using the name of something Trump will ban would be in the worst possible taste in this context.) Will we keep it up? What are our plans for an insurgency?