The president, seeing ominous signs of this earlier in the year, sought to scare these voters back into his camp, warning of an assault on the suburbs and violence visiting their families and communities. But this tactic appears to have backfired. Recent internal polling from Republicans and Democrats alike suggests that Trump’s law-and-order messaging alienated far more women than it attracted.
This isn’t just a problem for Trump in purple states. Last week, I heard from one of the smartest Republicans alive, a longtime party operator who lives in a state Trump carried by double digits. He told me the polling he was seeing there was something out of a nightmare; these were numbers he never expected to see in his lifetime. The only thing more dizzying than that? I had another conversation, with another dependable red-state Republican, the very next day, and heard the very same thing. Both of these men were sounding the alarm, alerting me that Trump could actually lose their states, and would at the very least drag down a number of down-ballot Republicans, because women have turned on the GOP at a historic clip. Trump lost women by 13 points to Clinton, according to exit polls, and Republicans have long worried that the figure could climb into the high teens. There is now genuine worry that the margin could explode north of 20 points—the biggest gender gap in modern election history.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/06/four-notes-election-reporter-notebook-426599
