Democrats Have a Republican-Women Problem

Democrats’ progress in Maricopa is due, in part, to demographic changes. Liberal out-of-staters have settled in the county. The Latino community is growing—it now constitutes about one-quarter of the state’s eligible voters—and progressive groups such as Living United for Change in Arizona and Mi Familia Vota have spent years working to register Latino voters and turn them out. But the development that has accelerated Arizona’s move to the left the fastest is the defection of white college graduates from the GOP, local political experts told me.

The president’s vicious attacks on John McCain—before and after the senator’s death last year—may have played a role in that defection. Ahead of last Tuesday’s election, the endorsement of Biden from Cindy McCain, John McCain’s wife, was expected to help encourage hesitant Republicans to cross the aisle. “The Cindy McCains of Arizona” are the ones who will give the state to Biden, Garrett Archer, an Arizona-based data analyst, told me last week. “It’s obvious that that’s where [Trump’s] biggest weakness was.”

Read: How to lose a swing state

Overall, most white Republican women supported Trump. But nationally, “we’ve not seen this amount of defection from the Republican Party in 20 or 30 years,” Christopher Weber, a professor at the University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy, told me.

The suburban shift went well beyond Maricopa. Through organizing by activists of color and the leftward tilt of white, college-educated women, Biden was able to capture many of America’s other big suburbs, including Cobb County, Georgia, outside of Atlanta, and the counties surrounding Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Detroit; and Houston.

For many of the GOP defectors, it came down to the president’s personality—his flagrant racism and misogyny, his bullying, his insult comedy. “People talk about [voter] enthusiasm, but there should also be a revulsion metric,” said Longwell, who founded the political initiative Republican Voters Against Trump earlier this year. “The important thing with Republican women is just how revolted they are by Donald Trump.”

“My main problem in 2016 was his character,” said 36-year-old Amanda Harless, who was wearing a black mask that said “Be kind” in cursive. “Someone with character doesn’t put kids in cages. Someone with character doesn’t reduce our number of refugees to a historic low or take away health insurance from people in the middle of a pandemic.” While they watched the election returns, some of the women pinpointed the moments during Trump’s first campaign when they realized they couldn’t support him. “I was out with Access Hollywood!” Kendra Halterman, 44, said with a wry laugh. “Mine was when he made fun of the disabled reporter,” said Andersen, who has twin sons with disabilities. “Mine was ‘Mexicans are rapists and criminals,’” 42-year-old Allison Skousen said, shaking her head.