The women ‘cancel’ their Trump-loving partner’s votes: ‘No one will ever know’ | US election 2024

Mackenzie owens and her boyfriend strut at the camera like models on a catwalk, posing as she takes a dramatic sip from her stanley cup. “Just a boyfriend and a girlfriend will cancel each other’s votes,” reads the caption their TikTok — the couple, who live in Pennsylvania, are supporting separate candidates this election season.

Owens created TikTok to participate in a trend of women revealing that they are voting against their partner’s preferred candidates. In one video, a woman mischievously hides a strand of hair as she sends in her ballot and “proudly” cancels her boyfriend’s ballot — “because someone has been paying attention in America’s history and has to worry about keeping the Department of Education!!! !” In another, a woman dances to Ciara’s Level Up before driving off to “cancel” her “Trump loving husband vote in a swinging state”.

The dozens of women participating are mostly Democrats supporting Kamala Harris’ bid, while their male partners are voting for Donald Trump. (Owens did not reveal who she or her boyfriend voted for.) While their posts provide levity in the final days of an ugly presidential election, they also underscore the critical role gender plays in the election.

ONE national opinion poll at the end of October from USA Today/Suffolk University found that women overwhelmingly support Harris over Trump, 53% to 36%, a “mirror image” of men’s support for Trump over Harris, 53% to 37%. ONE September vote from Quinnipiac University similarly found a gender difference of 26 points. An unknown – but certainly significant – number of women see this gender gap in their own relationships.

Owens, who is 19, isn’t particularly bothered by her boyfriend’s politics. “Nowadays people think you have to have the same political views as your partner because (hyper-partisan politics) is a big problem in society, but I personally think it’s cool to coexist and learn about the other side, and get different opinions I didn’t think of before,” she said. “But in a way it’s not socially acceptable.”

Meanwhile, liberal TikTokers are weighing in to say they could never date or marry a Trump supporter, given the former president’s sexist remarks about women and his appointment of anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court, resulting in the 2022 Roe v Wade was returned. . “What do you mean you’re about to cancel your husband’s vote?” reader a viral tweet. “You should be on your way to the courthouse. Divorce baby. Divorce.”

Harris need women to show up on Tuesday, especially those who might take a page from the TikTokers’ playbook and vote differently than the men in their lives. But those positions mostly come from young, liberal women who feel comfortable publicly disagreeing with candidates. In recent days, Democratic groups have made overtures to Republican women, or women who project conservatism to their friends and family but quietly harbor doubts about Trump.

Republican turnout among women — especially white women, who supported Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections — can be partly explained by their husbands being seen as influencing the family vote, said strategists and advocates who spoke to The Guardian.

“Women often respect their men’s presumed expertise on politics, and then the men reinforce that presumption and express their intensity and so-called greater expertise,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. “We try to emphasize to women that you have your own way of doing things, your own point of view, you focus on what is good for the whole family. Then we emphasize that the vote is private.”

It is a feeling that resonates within one new adtold by Julia Roberts, of the progressive evangelical organization Vote Common Good. In the ad, a woman whose husband appears to be a Trump supporter walks into a voting booth to cast her vote for Harris. “In the one place in America where women still have the right to vote, you can vote any way you want and no one will ever know,” Roberts says in the voiceover.

Doug Pagitt, executive director of Vote Common Good, said the group first conceptualized the ad during the 2022 midterms. “We kept hearing from women that they would pay an emotional price with their families, friends and church if they didn’t continue to stand on the border (and vote for Trump),” Pagitt said.

At a campaign stop in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Michelle Obama told swing state voters: “If you’re a woman living in a household of men who don’t listen to you or value your opinion, just remember that your vote is a private matter.” Liz Cheney, a never-Trump Republican who campaigned with Harris in Detroit last week, reminded Republican women that there is no official way to look up how someone voted: “You can vote your conscience and never have to say a word to anybody, and there will be millions of Republicans doing that on November 5.”

The Lincoln Project, a moderate political action committee, also released an ad directly titled, Secret, in which two Trump-supporting husbands assume their wives also support their candidate. But when the couples get to the polls, one of the women says “Kamala” to the other, and after a nod of approval, both fill out their ballots for the Democrat.

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That message is drawing ire among conservative figures, who say it’s sexist and retrograde to assume that women are only voting for Trump to appease their husbands. They also say, paradoxically, that this message undermines traditional family values. Charlie Kirk, there last year said the “radical left” was “powered by childless young ladies” on anti-depressants, called ads “the epitome of the downfall of the American family” on Megyn Kelly’s podcast.

Fox News host Jesse Watters said that if he found out his wife had secretly voted for Harris, “it’s like having an affair … it violates the sanctity of our marriage”. This despite the fact that Watters had an affair with his current wife while he was still married to his first wife.

Lately, these complex — and often secretive — relationship dynamics are affecting Democrats’ ground game, said Kelly Dittmar, director of research and a researcher at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics. “You see it in public women’s bathrooms or places where women can be appealed to directly without the barrier of the man in their lives. There are stickers or signs that say, “Remember, your vote is private,” she said.

Nancy Hirschmann, a political scientist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, added that canvassers for Harris were trained to avoid outing wives who may be registered Democrats to their Republican husbands: “If a man walks in the door who is clearly in favor of Trump , don’t ask for the woman by name, you’re asking if there are other voters in the house you can talk to.”

It is too early to tell whether Republican-coded women may in fact turn out to be secret Harris voters. But back on TikTok, women are vocally sharing their choices from 2024, even if they go against their partner’s — or an ex-partner’s — choice.

Jamisen Casey, a 21-year-old student who attends school in California but is registered to vote in her home state of Tennessee, joined the trend with a twist. “My absentee ballot on the way home to cancel my ex-boyfriend’s vote,” Casey wrote in the caption of a video showing her dancing with the envelope while We Both Reached for the Gun from the musical Chicago plays.

“It’s really hard to know that there are men out there who want to vote against reproductive rights when they shouldn’t have a say in it at all,” said Casey, who voted for Harris. She doesn’t think she could date someone who doesn’t share her views again. “As a political science major, I made a decision that I don’t want to put myself in that position.”