When you’re a star, as Donald Trump has said more than once, women let you do whatever you want with them. As president, that meant putting three right-wing justices on the Supreme Court and stripping half the country of a constitutional right so that people like him – their self-appointed “protector” – could have the final say on what a woman does with her body.

“I’m going to do it whether women like it or not,” the former president reiterated at a campaign stop on Wednesday. “I will protect her.”

It turns out that women don’t care – at least the vast majority of them. While millions will still vote for the Republican candidate because they may hate immigrants more than they love reproductive rights, the only thing certain at this point is that many millions more will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. In the latest ABC News/Ipsos national poll, the Democrat had a 14% lead over Trump among women; for women with college degrees, that number rose to 23%; Among female voters under 40, the proportion jumped to 34%.

According to the Brookings Institution, Harris’ strength among women upset about the Dobbs decision in 2022 could explain why Democrats are doing better than Republicans among older voters for the first time in ages. The think tank’s Michael Hais and Morley Winograd found that there was a 10-point swing in favor of Harris among voters over 65 compared to 2020, according to the ABC News/Ipsos poll.

“Some observers believe that this change is being driven by the ‘revenge of the boomer feminists’ among the women of this famous generation, all of whom are now over 65 but gained their political experience fighting for equality when they were much younger “says Hais and Winograd wrote. Younger voters may be angry about losing a right they never lived without, but older people have seen hard-fought progress rolled back. They are also the most reliable group of voters – and they tend to vote early.

This is exactly what seems to be happening in contested states. In states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, 55% of all ballots cast so far are women, according to a Politico analysis of early voting numbers.

This, in turn, is causing some MAGA commentators to deviate from their usual attitude of feigned confidence and completely panic.

“Early voting was disproportionately female,” Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA and the Trump campaign’s turnout lead, posted on social media. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.” (To motivate these voters, Kirk voiced Orwell’s misogyny: “If you want a vision of the future when you don’t vote, imagine Kamala’s cackling voice, forever.”)

Saying that female voters could cost Trump another term might just be a scare tactic to motivate other men who hate women. After all, Democrats often raise money and motivate their own voters by warning that an election will soon be lost.

But speaking to former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, Kirk seemed genuinely upset that women were voting for Harris in large numbers — and lying to their controlling husbands about it.

“It’s so disgusting. It’s so disastrous. It is the embodiment of the downfall of the American family. I find it so disgusting. I just think it’s so disgusting,” Kirk said, prompted by a new ad produced by a liberal Christian organization in which Julia Roberts reminds women that how to vote is not communicated to an emotionally retarded man must, who would have a seizure. (“This is the same thing as an affair,” Fox News’ Jesse Watters commented on the ad. “It violates the sanctity of our marriage.”)

The exaggerated reaction to the ad – which simply serves as a reminder that in a democracy voting is secret – could be interpreted as something other than absolute trust. And while the early voting numbers shouldn’t be confused with the final numbers, there is data to support Republicans’ concerns.

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According to NBC News, more than 1.6 million ballots have already been cast in Pennsylvania. In a state with more than 8.8 million registered voters, that’s not enough to have already decided the election. However, it does suggest an early but large divide when it comes to gender: So far, 56% of mail-in ballots have come from women, a 13% advantage over men.

That gap is roughly the same as in 2020. In 2024, however, Republicans have strongly encouraged their supporters to vote early, a campaign that has closed the gap between the parties: in the last presidential election, less than a quarter of the mail was cast -in votes came from Republicans, compared with about a third today.

Democrats hope that the fact that the same gender inequality persists in Pennsylvania and elsewhere is a sign of dissent among Republican women and others who may have supported former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the GOP primary (157,000 Pennsylvanians did this, six weeks after she did it). dropped out).

Mike Cernovich, a pro-Trump influencer, is openly freaking out.

“Male turnout in Pennsylvania for Trump was a disaster,” Cernovich wrote on social media. “Unless that changes, Kamala Harris will take over PA and it will be over.”