Women voters are set to play a pivotal role in November’s general election as both parties court the key demographic and as reproductive rights emerge as a major motivating issue on both sides of the aisle.
Millions more women than men have registered to vote in recent cycles, and they’ve bested men in turnout numbers in every presidential election since 1964.
However, women voters are not a monolith and can differ in terms of how they vote and their top issues, according to polling.
Here’s where women voters stand as 2024 heats up:
Women voters of color
Black women are seen by many as the backbone of the Democratic Party, notably helping President Biden and the party flip Georgia from red to blue in 2020.
“We saw Black women in the last couple of cycles really push the Democratic Party to recognize their value as voters,” said Kelly Dittmar, a Rutgers University political scientist and scholar at the school’s Center for American Women and Politics, adding that some of that pressure led to Kamala Harris as Biden’s 2020 vice presidential pick.
This cycle, Black women say cost and inflation are among their top issues. According to a poll conducted by HIT Strategies on behalf of Higher Heights Leadership Fund, a national organization dedicated to advancing Black women’s political power, 71 percent of Black women said they were “very worried” about the cost of living, while 65 percent said they were “very worried” about affordable housing.
Black women also expressed concern over the future of reproductive rights, according to the poll. More than 40 percent of Black women said they are more likely to support a candidate who is “pro-reproductive freedom.”
“The economy by far was their biggest concern. People are just trying to make sure they can go to the grocery store, put gas in their tank, pay their rent and their mortgage,” said April Turner, vice president of communications at Higher Heights.
“We also saw that abortion rights is very, very important to them and something that we think is definitely going to galvanize Black women as they go to the polls this year,” she continued. “The rollback of these rights is a concern to them.”
Gallup polling from February found Democrats’ lead in Black Americans’ party preferences has fallen nearly 20 points in the past three years, and their lead among Hispanic adults is at its lowest point since 2011.
Experts say there isn’t evidence of a mass exodus of voters of color from the party; around 7 in 10 Latina women in 2020 voted for Biden over Trump, compared to roughly 6 in 10 Latino men who did the same, according to a survey roundup from CAWP research.
But the polls do indicate a need for both parties to up their efforts to engage with Hispanic voters — particularly women, who were also more likely than Hispanic men to turn out in 2020.
“Latina and Asian women, who are increasingly a larger and larger proportion of the electorate, [there’s] not as much consistency as there is in the Black women’s community and their political beliefs and view because there’s so much diversity of where they’re coming from right, where their origins are from, where they live in the United States,” Dittmar said.
Cuban Americans, for example, have a “very different” political orientation compared to Mexican Americans, Dittmar noted.
According to a survey from UnidosUS released late last year, 54 percent of Latino voters said inflation and the coast of living were their top issues, followed by the economy at 44 percent and health care at 33 percent. The same poll also found widespread support for abortion rights among Latinos, with 71 percent saying they are against efforts to restrict the procedure.
“As with recent elections, we’re seeing that Latina voters are motivated by calls for a fair and…
This article was originally published by a thehill.com . Read the Original article here. .