I spoke with E.J. Graff, managing editor of The Monkey Cage Blog, for a piece in POLITICO Magazine exploring shifting gender dynamics within the GOP coalition:

“If these trends continue,” political scientist Melissa Deckman of Washington College told me, “women’s preference for Democrats will be a big contributor to the midterm results.”

And beyond the midterms, too. “Once you give up that party label, you’re less inclined to easily take it back,” says University of Virginia political scientist Jennifer Lawless. Liam Donovan, a lobbyist and former National Republican Senatorial Committee staffer, notes that the Republican loss of college-educated white women “is not balanced out by a huge spike among white men—on net, that’s a real problem for the Republicans.” Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, of all people, put it more starkly this summer: “The Republican college-educated woman is done. They’re gone. They were going anyway at some point in time. Trump triggers them.”

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Donovan, the former NRSC staffer, says he wonders how far women who leave the GOP will actually go. Will they call themselves independents who tend to lean Republican, akin to leaving the team’s clubhouse but staying in its yard? Putative independents who aren’t registered with one party but who tell pollsters that they nonetheless sympathize with one party, Lawless explains, tend to vote for that party’s ticket as reliably as those who embrace the party label. That means the big question is whether, as she puts it, “these women who are saying the Republican Party no longer represents them and are eschewing the party label—will they still lean Republican?”

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Of course, a lot rides on what the Republican Party does in the years ahead. Certainly, by saying recently that it’s “a very scary time” to be a young man, Trump has “put the pedal to the metal” on the GOP’s appeal to angry white blue-collar men, Donovan says. But as Masket put it, “There are a lot of young women coming of age in this presidency who will vote for the first time either this year or in 2020, with this very stark view of gender relations between the two parties.” He sees the Ford/Kavanaugh hearings as a powerful influence at such a formative moment for social identity: “Those images aren’t ones that go away very quickly.”

Read the entire piece here.

I spoke with Benjy Sarlin of NBC News about the “Kavanaugh effect” and its potential impact on the midterm election:

Republicans celebrated the reaction to Kavanaugh’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee after limited polling suggested their voters had closed the enthusiasm gap with Democrats. But some strategists are concerned about how far the ‘Kavanaugh effect’ can carry the party post-confirmation and a month of unpredictable news cycles lies ahead until Election Day.

“I certainly think this exercise woke (Republicans) up and hit the right electoral pleasure centers, which we seem to be seeing reflected in some of the polling, but my fear would be peaking a hair too soon,” Liam Donovan, a former staffer at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told NBC News.

Read the entire piece here.

I spoke to Sahil Kapur of Bloomberg News about the Kavanaugh confirmation process and its effect on the midterm gender gap:

The GOP’s troubles with women are likely to hurt the party most in the battle for the House, where Democrats need to flip at least 23 Republican-held seats to gain a majority. Many of the most competitive races are in suburban districts which have large numbers of college-educated women, a group with relatively high turnout. Of the more than 250 women on congressional ballots in November, more than three-quarters of them are running as Democrats.

“The problem for the GOP is twofold: one, the advantage cuts disproportionately in favor of Dems, and two, the drop-off is particularly acute among educated women in the metro suburbs where their members are most vulnerable,” said Liam Donovan, a former operative for the Senate Republican campaign arm who’s now a lobbyist.

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Polls over the past month have shown Democrats with a consistent lead over Republicans when voters are asked which party they prefer in the midterms. Much of that is driven by female voters strongly backing Democrats, while men are more narrowly divided between the two parties.

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To the extent that the Kavanaugh battle “drives the wedge further, Republicans have to hope that it activates men in the way that blunts Democrats’ overall advantage,” Donovan said. “They can survive a gap — it’s the sheer one-sidedness that stands to hurt them.”

Read the entire piece here.