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00:00Now, as both candidates make final appeals to undecided voters, they're also vying for
00:04votes from women, who cast ballots, of course, in much higher numbers than men.
00:09And female voters do tend to favor Democrats, this election being no exception to that rule.
00:14For more on this, Douglas Herbert, our international affairs commentator, joins me here on set.
00:19So, Doug, do you think that women could be the voters to tip the ballots?
00:22Well, the Democrats are certainly hoping that.
00:24Look, you know, if you're one of these people who have not stopped watching politics in
00:28the U.S. election news these past few days, continue reading headlines about the election,
00:32what you keep seeing are these words, gender gap, which is exactly that.
00:37Because the latest polls, it was an ABC Ipsos poll, basically show Donald Trump trailing
00:44Kamala Harris in the female vote by 14 points, 14 percentage points.
00:49And on the flip side of that, he's only leading in the male vote among men by six points.
00:54So when you talk about the gender gap, that's what they're talking about.
00:56But Donald Trump, in order to have sort of an equal weight of male and female voters
01:00in these in this election, he has a lot of ground to make up.
01:03Now, publicly, he's not he's not sweating.
01:06He's not showing it.
01:07He's not fretting.
01:08Privately, there are reports that he is concerned when he speaks to his aides, when he speaks
01:12to his close allies on the phone, he asks them he straight out, he says, hey, why?
01:17Why aren't women more women voting for me?
01:19Well, what's going on here?
01:20What's going on here?
01:21Well, a lot of strategists will tell you they see the answer is pretty straightforward.
01:25Why aren't more women voting for Donald Trump?
01:27One of them is the tone of his of his campaigning.
01:31He has tended to speak to what a lot of people refer to as the man overse, a very macho,
01:36male infused sort of campaign tone and rhetoric that appeals to young men doesn't mean it
01:43doesn't appeal to some women, but as a group, not to all women.
01:47Meanwhile, we keep talking about the issues that are top of voters concerns in this campaign.
01:51Right?
01:52Nationally, we keep saying immigration is number one, followed by abortion, right?
01:57Or economy.
01:59And when you come to women here, the number one issues basically are economy and abortion
02:04tied.
02:05And so you don't have to take a great stretch of the imagination to see why a certain segment
02:10of women would be not inclined to drift towards Trump.
02:15Because since that, you know, the Roe versus Wade decision was essentially overturned by
02:18the Supreme Court.
02:20You have had Donald Trump trying to sort of play it both ways a little bit in the abortion
02:25debate.
02:26But a lot of women say they're not fooled.
02:29They believe that when he says leave it to the states, he is much more in the anti abortion
02:33camp, the anti pro choice camp than he's letting on.
02:38So he's being too coy for a lot of them.
02:40But at the end of the day, this gender gap, you ask if it could tip the election for Kamala
02:44Harris.
02:45And in a way, the Democrats are certainly hoping on it.
02:47Women have voted early disproportionately as compared to men, about 55% versus 45% of
02:54those early votes of which we've had about 60 million early votes have been women.
02:58That's about a 10 point disparity.
02:59That amounts to if you want me to get really geeky with the statistics, that's almost one
03:03and a half million votes.
03:04Does it mean it's going to tip the election?
03:06No.
03:07But in a close contest in those seven battleground states, it can do something.
03:10It could definitely have an effect.
03:12And what about other demographics, Doug?
03:14This is this is a thorny issue, shows the limits, really, I think, of identity politics.
03:18But there has been a lot of attention paid, especially in the past couple of months or
03:22so to the power that young black men in particular may or may not have in terms of helping Trump
03:28win.
03:29Is there really any substance behind that?
03:31Well, the Democratic strategists would like you to think that this has been overhyped.
03:37This has been exaggerated by a media narrative, this media narrative, the young black men
03:41drifting away from the Democrats towards the Republicans.
03:44When I say exaggerated, it doesn't mean that there isn't a grain of truth in it.
03:48What it is is that, yes, it is absolutely true.
03:50The Democratic Party has historically been the backbone for the black vote.
03:56Barack Obama in his second term, 2012, he got 93 percent of the black vote.
04:02And if you really look at the entire demographic, the only people, the only demographic that's
04:07less likely to vote for Donald Trump than young black men are young black women.
04:12So that gives you a sense of the fact that black men still overwhelmingly tend to go
04:17for Democrats.
04:19But it's true that it's become this sort of conventional wisdom, right, this this monolithic
04:23assumption that if you're black, you know, this horror on people's faces, how could you
04:27possibly vote for Donald Trump?
04:29And a lot of black men, especially the younger ones who are thinking of voting, they take
04:33a little bit of an umbrage at that.
04:34They say, you know, don't make assumptions based on my race that I have to vote for one
04:38party or the other.
04:39A lot of younger black men, some of them actually feel betrayed by the Democratic Party.
04:43They say that they had a lot of hopes in the past, especially for Barack Obama.
04:47And they felt that the change that they had invested in him and had hoped for didn't really
04:52come.
04:53So you might say, well, is Donald Trump the alternative?
04:54Well, for a lot of them, they're willing to try it.
04:56They say, don't be so fast and easy in your in your assumptions.
05:00Just because I'm black doesn't mean that by birthright I have to cast a vote for Kamala
05:04Harris.
05:05Obviously, Kamala Harris is hoping to bring them into the fold.
05:07But it could be a heavy lift.
05:09But she still has overwhelming black support.
05:11I think we have to end with that overall idea.
05:14Overwhelming black support right now, 60 to 70 to 75 percent, depending on the poll.