The pleasant woman sitting on her porch one recent afternoon seemed intrigued by what Kristin Fulwylie had to say about a state Senate candidate and other Democrats on her North Carolina ballot. She graciously accepted a leaflet touting the party’s slate, from Vice President Kamala Harris on down.
Fulwylie then strolled down the street to continue knocking on doors in Cabarrus County, outside of Charlotte. When she doubled back to her car, a man Fulwylie took to be the woman’s husband confronted her, campaign literature in hand.
“You can have this back. We’re not supporting any of these candidates,” Fulwylie recalled the man telling her. The woman on the porch no longer made eye contact with her, she said.
“I’m not sure how she plans to vote,” said Fulwylie, executive director of D4 Women in Action, the political arm of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. “He made it very clear that they were doing the complete opposite of what she had originally told me.”
As for the woman, Fulwylie said, “She didn’t say anything.”
Even as one of their own vies to be the first female president, even with abortion rights high on the list of campaign issues, even after more than a century of suffrage, some women still look to their husbands and other trusted men before casting their ballots, campaign operatives and researchers told The Fuller Project.
A minority of them are intimidated by overbearing men, but more women simply lack confidence in their own political acumen and turn to the men in their lives for guidance, they said.
“Women are very impacted by the men in their lives around voting. They don’t want any trouble or tension in their relationship,” said Democratic strategist Jill Alper. Noting that women often are overburdened by a combination of paid work and a disproportionate share of family responsibilities, she added, “They give more credence to what a man thinks because they think he has more time to do the research.”
The phenomenon is not new, but it could make the difference in a presidential race that is projected to be unusually tight. And because polls predict what could be a record-setting gender gap—with the majority of women voting for Harris and most men backing former President Donald Trump—the possibility that even a small number of women will vote like their men has Harris supporters nervous.
They have reason to be, according to a poll of women conducted for American University’s Women & Politics Institute and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation. Fifteen percent of respondents who live with a partner told pollsters that they “regularly” or “sometimes” feel pressured to vote as their partners do.
“And about half of women in serious relationships said that they were in a ‘mixed household’ when it came to political ideology, which means sometimes there were disagreements on issues,” said Amanda Hunter, the foundation’s former executive director.
Adding to the stress is the fact that it’s easier for partners to eye each other’s selections if they vote from home using mail-in ballots, a habit that became more common before and, especially, during the pandemic.
The problem has been exacerbated this year because Trump is running a testosterone-laden campaign replete with openly sexist and misogynistic slurs intended to bolster his support among men, said Christina Reynolds, a spokesperson for EMILYs List, which works to elect pro-choice Democratic women.
“It is the way that Trump speaks,” Reynolds said. “I think it maybe creates a permission structure there.”
As proof, she pointed to comments made by Fox News host Jesse Watters, who said that if his wife voted for Harris, it would be akin to her having an affair.
To counter the threat of female out-migration, Harris supporters are using tactics that range, from savvy TV ads, to hand-written Post-it notes to remind women that their votes are private. No lesser figures than former first lady Michelle Obama, former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and actor Julia Roberts have delivered the message.
The Lincoln Project, which was founded by anti-Trump Republicans, has been airing an ad that encourages women to vote for Harris even if their husbands expect them to support Trump. The vice president’s campaign is losing men’s votes “because of the bro language that Donald Trump is using,” said Ryan Wiggins, the Lincoln Project’s chief of staff. “He talks to them like they’re in locker rooms.” Women, on the other hand, are often repulsed by Trump’s behavior, she said.
“So when we made this ad, we made it to remind women that, hey, you don’t have to vote with your guy, especially if he is macking out this whole bro culture,” Wiggins said.”He will never know how you voted. You can lie to him. … He is not in that booth with you.”
In an emotional address in Kalamazoo, Mich., Obama pleaded with men to take seriously the threat a Trump presidency would pose to women’s lives and health through the abortion bans that have proliferated since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
She also offered some counsel to women.
“If you are a woman who lives in a household of men that don’t listen to you or value your opinion, just remember that your vote is a private matter,” Obama said at the Michigan rally in late October. “You get to use your judgment and cast your vote for yourself and the women in your life. Remember, women standing up for what is best for us can make the difference in this election.”
The overarching theme of the ads and the speeches and the sticky notes is clear: Vote your conscience.
At the same time, the admonitions have raised questions about what’s really going on in America.
Cindy Hohman, chair of Hendrick County Democrats in Indiana thinks she knows. When they knocked on doors, Democratic canvassers in her suburban Indianapolis county used to ask, by name, for women who had voted in the party’s primaries, she said. They stopped the practice in 2018, she said, after three women ended up in shelters.
“What was happening was that we were asking for a woman if we had her on our voter rolls as a Democrat, and her husband would answer the door, and we’d say, ‘Hi, is Hannah home?’ or whoever? And he would say, ‘No, who are you?’”
When canvassers identified themselves, some husbands responded with something akin to, “If she’s voting Democrat, I’m gonna kick her ass,” Hohman recalled.
More common, said political experts, is that women agree voluntarily to follow their husbands’ recommendations, not so much to escape physical assault (though there are no statistics on politics-related intimate partner violence), but verbal disputes.
Sometimes, they said, it’s just easier to accept a man’s political advice than to argue about it.
Jackie Payne, the founder and executive director of Galvanize Action, has a lot of experience with women who seek political advice from their male partners, bosses, friends and relatives. The 49 million moderate white women that her nonpartisan organization researches are generally civic-minded and vote in high numbers, but they often feel ill-informed and, therefore, are subject to influence, she said.
“They tell us that they really don’t like politics very much, that they avoid the news, which they view as increasingly negative, and as a result, they end up feeling like the men in their lives know more about politics than they do,” Payne said. “So pretty rationally then, that can lead to relying on these men, these men they trust, on their opinion of who to vote for, even when doing so means that issues that matter very much to these women are not being prioritized.”
These women, she said, will subordinate their interests to keep the peace. This year women are much more concerned about restoring abortion rights than are men, Payne said.
In a September survey of more than 8,000 moderate white women whom Galvanize Action has been tracking for months, nearly one-third (31 percent) said they strongly agreed with this statement: “I would only vote for a presidential candidate who will take action to protect abortion for everyone.” Another 17 percent said they agreed “somewhat.”
That would seem to bode well for Harris, a staunch and vocal advocate for abortion rights. Indeed, her campaign and those of Democrats all over the country are making sure voters remember that it was Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees who made it possible for the Court to overturn Roe. (Trump also has campaigned on his role in sending abortion back to the states, falsely claiming that’s what “everybody” wanted.)
But not all women who care about abortion want to risk their relationships fighting for it, Payne said.
“I frequently have had women ask me, ‘Do I have to get divorced over this?’” she said.
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake sees the same trend in polls and focus groups.
“Women will say things like, ‘You should be talking to my husband. He knows more about politics than I do.’ Or, ‘He really follows this, I don’t.’ Or, ‘I listen to him about who to vote for,’” Lake said. “And the men, of course, presume their superior knowledge as well. So it’s not just a power control issue, it’s a presumed expertise.”
One particular group of women, she noted, are confident in their own expertise.
“College-educated women are trying to intimidate their husbands into voting the way they want,” Lake said. Republicans, she added, are working for the first time to prevent college-educated men, who tend to base their votes on economic issues and favor Trump, from being swayed by their wives.
This article was produced in collaboration with The Fuller Project, a journalism nonprofit that reports on global issues affecting women.
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