Two of former president Donald Trump’s most prominent backers in the right wing influencer sphere fretted Wednesday after early voting numbers showed massive early turnout among women that could imperil their candidate’s path to victory.
“Male turnout in Pennsylvania for Trump has been a disaster,” tweeted Mike Cernovich on Wednesday. “Unless this changes, Kamala Harris takes PA and it’s over.”
Cernovich is a longtime far right gadfly and commentator with a massive online following.
He’s been around long enough to have played a role in the anti-feminist Gamergate harassment campaign and to have helped spread the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, though has disavowed the alt-right and drifted closer to the mainstream conservative movement in recent years. (Trump’s eldest child, Donald Jr., once said he deserved a Pulitzer Prize).
When a follower questioned his assessment, Cernovich pointed out that conservative organizer Charlie Kirk, who he called “one of the most significant [get out the vote] activists in the country,” had also raised the alarm.
“Early vote has been disproportionately female,” tweeted Kirk earlier Wednesday. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.”
Kirk, whose conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA is a central force in organizing and coordinating right wing campus activism across America, is a close ally of Donald Jr., though has not yet been tipped for a Pulitzer by the former president’s eldest offspring.
Preliminary data supports their concerns.
A Politico analysis of early vote data in battleground states published on Tuesday showed a 10 point gender gap in early voting, with women comprising 55 percent of those who had cast ballots. Nation-wide early voting data compiled by NBC showed Thursday that, of roughly 58 million mail-in and early in-person votes cast across the country, 54 percent came from women.
National and swing state polls show Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, with a commanding double digit lead among women voters.
“In some states women are actually exceeding their vote share from 2020, which is at this point shocking to me,” Democratic strategist Tom Bonier told Politico. “I never would have bet on that.”
In a follow up post, Cernovich praised Trump’s strategy of appearing on a string of podcasts with overwhelmingly male audiences—including the Joe Rogan Experience—as a way of getting his message out without going through traditional and legacy media.
But he also mocked the demographics of the podcast listenership, noting the Republican campaign should do more to reach women voters—presumably more than Trump’s babbling about how he’ll “protect” women if he gets back into the White House.
“It’s great that Trump did podcasts,” Cernovich wrote. “It drove news, which is good because otherwise stuff gets made up. Problem is thinking that Draft Kings coupon code link clicking alcoholics who space out when tuning into podcasts while high, vote. Women vote, and more needs to be done!”
Cernovich is still holding out hope that turnout can change.
Men do tend to vote in proportionately higher numbers on Election Day, although, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, the turnout gap between women and men voters has grown in favor of women in every presidential election since 1980.
