Donald Trump’s rhetoric, behaviour and policies towards women are driving them away from the Republican Party, with the 2024 presidential election set to continue the historic gender divide between Trump and his opponents.

The Republican nominee launched a spree of sexist attacks against Vice-President Kamala Harris online this week, claiming she got ahead in politics by offering sexual favours, continuing a history of sexist attacks against female politicians.

David Smith, an associate professor at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre, said that the past two presidential elections have seen the largest ever gender gap in voting.

“The polls at the moment seem to indicate a similar thing: Harris has about a 20-point advantage over Trump with women, albeit with Trump having a similar advantage with male voters,” he said.

“This issue won’t lose him this election in a landslide because he has that advantage with male voters.”

Trump won 11 per cent more of the male vote compared to Clinton in 2016 and 2 per cent against Biden in 2020, but women voted for Clinton 15 per cent more and 11 per cent for Biden.

Both Clinton and Biden won a majority of female voters in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Photo: Getty

Harris is currently leading Trump by 13 per cent among women voters and by 4 per cent nationally, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Abortion on the ballot

Smith said that Trump’s behaviour towards women, a civil finding of rape and his role in overturning Roe v Wade, which allowed states to ban abortion procedures, has made it difficult for him to win over women voters.

“In the last two elections, he has had the majority of white female voters, but overall there has been a significant gender gap because he wins very few minority women voters,” he said.

“College-educated, professional, middle-class women, who used to form the backbone of the Republican Party and have quite conservative beliefs, were turned away by Trump’s rhetoric.”

Trump has held almost every stance on abortion possible throughout his life, having declared himself pro-choice in 1999 and pro-life in 2011, before advocating for a 20-week abortion ban as president and nominating justices who helped overturn protections.

This week, Trump argued against a six-week abortion ban in Florida, where he can vote on the measure, in an interview with NBC News.

“I think the six-week is too short, there has to be more time,” Trump said.

“I’ve told them I want more weeks … I’m going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.”

The 2022 decision to reverse Roe v Wade has resulted in 11 states, many of them Republican strongholds like Florida, introducing constitutional amendments to protect abortion rights in the coming election.

His campaign quickly backtracked in a statement, declaring that the Republican candidate has “not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida”.

Will it be a factor?

Smith said that having abortion access measures on the ballot during the 2022 midterm elections drove high turnout for the Democratic Party, but it is hard to say how much impact it will have on the presidential election.

“When you look at the states that have voted to retain abortion rights — Kentucky, Kansas, Ohio — they didn’t then vote a lot of Democratic candidates in the election,” he said.

“Back in 2016, the same year Trump won Florida decisively, they also voted to legalise marijuana and raise the minimum age.”

Smith said that Democratic policies are more popular than the Democratic Party itself and that “if you take liberal policies and don’t call them liberal, it makes them more popular”.

“I was struck by something Trump said to an interviewer a few days ago when he was asked about all the groups that he’s struggling with in the polls, including women,” he said.

“He said that we are doing great with women because women want to feel safe. He’s got this one-dimensional view of female voters.”