New voter registrations have soared by an astonishing proportion in recent months--and the demographics could spell doom for Republicans.
Since the June 24 Supreme Court decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, which overturned Roe v. Wade, a staggering number of new voters have registered--and the overwhelming majority of them are women.
In some states as much as 70% of new registrants are women. In others, new female voters outstrip new male voters by double-digit margins, with women vastly outpacing male registrants across the board in all states with hotly contested fall midterm races.
And it seems to have sent Republicans into a low-grade panic amid what appears more and more to have been a grave political miscalculation as to the popularity of rights to abortion access.
The numbers come from Tom Bonier, CEO of TargetSmart, a Democratic-aligned data services firm.
\u201cWow. I've been sharing data showing a huge surge in women registering to vote since the 6/24 Dobbs decision. I just started to look at some age and party breakdowns of those new registrants, and the numbers are jaw-dropping.\u201d— Tom Bonier (@Tom Bonier) 1660910322
Bonier shared some of his data in a Twitter thread, in which he wrote:
"Wow. I've been sharing data showing a huge surge in women registering to vote since the 6/24 Dobbs decision. I just started to look at some age and party breakdowns of those new registrants, and the numbers are jaw-dropping."
In Ohio, to take but one extreme example, Bonier found women outregistering men by an 11-point margin--more than 10 times that of previous election years.
\u201cOhio! Since the Dobbs decision on 6/24, women have out-registered men by an 11 pt margin. In 2018, new registrants were slightly more women than men (.75 pt margin) and in 2020 they were more men (1.5 pt margin). Who are these women who are registering to vote?\u201d— Tom Bonier (@Tom Bonier) 1661306829
For many, the trend has called to mind reliably-red Kansas' shocking landslide repudiation of an anti-choice ballot measure earlier this month when a clear majority of Kansas voters opted to protect abortion rights in their state constitution.
To put that victory in context, Bonier's data show Kansas saw an astonishingly wide female-skewing gender gap among new registrants that was orders of magnitude larger than any other state.
\u201cHere are the states with the biggest gender gap among new registrants since the Dobbs decision was handed down. This isn't just a blue state phenomena. In fact, it is more pronounced in states where choice is more at risk, or has been eliminated by the decision.\u201d— Tom Bonier (@Tom Bonier) 1660743610
But as columnist Jennifer Rubin explained in The Washington Post, the data show this trend is not a Kansas-specific anomaly. Though a far cry from Kansas' 40% gender gap among new registrants, second-place dark-red Idaho showed a whopping 18% gap.
And it's happening all over the country in states with hotly contested Congressional races like Wisconsin, where newly registered women outpaced men by 17% , and those with abortion bans on the ballot in November like Michigan, where women out-registered men by more than 8%.
And it's got Republicans running scared.
In Arizona on Thursday, far-right Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters scrubbed his website clean of his incredibly draconian anti-abortion stances, including advocacy for a federal personhood law and Constitutional amendment, in favor of what he called "commonsense" bans on exceedingly rare late-term and so-called partial-birth abortions, the latter of which do not exist.
He then accused Democrats and his opponent, incumbent Senator Mark Kelly, of "lying" about his abortion stances.
The female voter surge is also the likely cause of a shocking upset win this week by Democrat Pat Ryan in New York's 19th district, where former Republican President Donald Trump won handily in 2016, a victory few saw coming.
On Twitter, the voter-registration news definitely struck a chord, and many saw it as a portent for a "blue wave" in what many are dubbing "Roevember."
\u201cIt\u2019s not a coincidence that voter registration is surging amongst women. \n\nIt\u2019s because #WomenWillSaveDemocracy.\u201d— Santiago Mayer (@Santiago Mayer) 1661537608
\u201cKansas beat back the abortion ban by 20 points\n\nDemocrat voter registration is soaring, driven by women\n\nDemocrat Pat Ryan just won in a rural district Trump won in 2016\n\nThis isn\u2019t just a blue wave\n\nThis is a tidal wave of WOMEN\n\nMisogynists & religious freaks, your time is up\u201d— Lindy Li (@Lindy Li) 1661318034
\u201cWomen are outpacing men in voter registration since Roe was overturned.\nThe pussies are grabbing back. See you in Roevember.\u201d— Duty To Warn \ud83d\udd09 (@Duty To Warn \ud83d\udd09) 1661436849
\u201cDobbs is impacting voter registration \n\nIn MI: \n\n\u201cAmong the 12,879 new voters that have registered since the Dobbs decision, women are out-registering men by 8.1%,\u201d TargetSmart\u00a0reports. Moreover, \u201cIn the same time frame, Dems are out-registering GOP by 18%.\u201d\n\n#RoeRoeRoeYourVote\u201d— DrDinD \ud83c\udf0a\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf2\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6 (@DrDinD \ud83c\udf0a\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf2\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6) 1661009421
\u201cit\u2019s no longer \u201cthe midterms\u201d. it\u2019s #ROEVEMBER.\u201d— jordy (@jordy) 1660917934
\u201cI am here to tell you that the women of Arizona see right through Fake Blake Masters. #Roevember\u201d— \ud83d\udc99Brittney\ud83d\udc99 (@\ud83d\udc99Brittney\ud83d\udc99) 1661519290
\u201cThis and interesting new Pew poll: A majority of registered voters (56%) say the issue of abortion will be very important in their midterm vote, up from 43% in March.\u201d— Stephanie Kirchgaessner (@Stephanie Kirchgaessner) 1661347850
\u201cWe're going to shove the Supreme Court ruling down the Republican's throats this Roevember. Their policies are anti-American and we're showing up to end them.\nhttps://t.co/OuVMBoqF6p\u201d— Eric Charbonneau (@Eric Charbonneau) 1661379259
\u201cRoe, Roe, Roe your vote! \nRoevember is coming.\n\ud83d\uddf3\ufe0f\ud83d\uddfd\ud83c\udf0a\u201d— bb_imissu (@bb_imissu) 1661388226
\u201cYou're right President Biden, they are about to #FAFO about messing with women. We don't play, they will not take our rights away. We don't go quietly into the night.\u201d— Blue Blooded Dem-Fighting Ready in the Double \u270c\ud83c\udffe\u270c (@Blue Blooded Dem-Fighting Ready in the Double \u270c\ud83c\udffe\u270c) 1661482295
It seems like all of Republicans' "fu*king around" with abortion rights just might land them in the painful "and find out" stage come November.
@PreetBharara/X
@RepBrendanBoyle/X
@twesq/Bluesky
@christopherharris/Bluesky
@evangelinewarren/X
@FrankC164/X