Donald Trump has a problem: White women in Pennsylvania - POLITICO

White women helped propel him to victory in 2016.

The 71-year-old resident of the battleground state of Pennsylvania, a registered Democrat, voted for Donald Trump.

Bortz isn’t alone: Women in Pennsylvania and across the country are leaving Trump behind, including the white women who helped power his victory four years ago, according to polling in key states.

White women with college degrees in Pennsylvania are especially done with him, rejecting him at even higher rates than they did in 2016.

And while Trump is still winning white women without college degrees in the state, he’s doing so by a much smaller margin than in 2016.

In a place like Pennsylvania — a state Trump won by only 44,000 votes in 2016 and which is now widely considered the tipping-point state in the Electoral College — those margins matter.

Aware of the threat to his reelection bid with 15 days to go, Trump made a direct appeal to women in Pennsylvania last week, baffled by their apparent aversion to him.

But white suburban women aren’t answering Trump’s plea.

In 2016, Trump won white women in the state by 50 percent to Hillary Clinton’s 47 percent, according to exit polls.

A Washington Post/ABC poll of Pennsylvania voters in September showed a similar lead, with white women preferring Biden by 13 points.

In interviews with voters and party officials throughout the state, however, it's clear the outlook is bleak for Trump.

Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who frequently conducts focus groups with people who voted for Trump in 2016, said the president is running out of time.

“The bottom is falling out for Trump with women and with college-educated voters in the suburbs,” said Longwell, founder of the political group Republican Voters Against Trump, referring to white voters.

On the same night Trump insisted suburban women should like him more than anybody else in attendance at his rally, Longwell conducted a focus group with seven white women who had voted for the president in 2016.

All women in the group, including those from Pennsylvania, had negative things to say about Trump.

Gloria Lee Snover, chair of Pennsylvania’s Northampton County Republican Party, said there are many women — mainly blue-collar or business owners — who support Trump in her county, which flipped from supporting Obama to Trump in 2016.

But “there is” a gender gap in the state, she acknowledged, particularly when it comes to suburban white women.

“When I look on Facebook, the women that support Biden are a lot of middle-aged suburban white women who are talking about Covid constantly and their fear of it,” she said.

GOP activists and strategists in Pennsylvania said they’ve tried for months to get Trump to switch gears and campaign predominantly on his management of the economy to win over suburban white women.

Christopher Nicholas, a longtime Republican consultant in the state, said it’s difficult for Trump to find a path to victory if he can’t win back some of the suburban white women in Pennsylvania who supported him in 2016.

Trump’s campaign said the president has a “wider pathway” in the state than in 2016, but didn’t provide its internal data.

Both campaigns are blanketing Pennsylvania and making explicit appeals to women voters of all races.

The two candidates themselves, Lara Trump, Jill Biden, Mike Pence and other surrogates have visited the state in the past two weeks.

Almost two weeks ago Jill Biden made the rounds in the Philadelphia suburbs, an area where a racially diverse group of suburban women helped propel Democratic victories in the House in 2018 and flip local governments a year later.

Susan Jacobson, a Biden volunteer at the event, said she's counting on suburban women who voted for Trump to come through for Democrats this time: “That’s what we’re hoping: that all of the women here in the suburbs who might have made some misguided decisions four years ago are all of a sudden getting religion.”

3 has to win by such an overwhelming margin of victory, it doesn't matter how many dead cats they have voting,” said Lara Trump, referring to a report of a family in Georgia who received a voter registration application from an unidentified third-party group for their dead cat

"You have to say her name right, Mercedes," Lara Trump said