Trump, Harris and the end of Roe all collide in closely divided battle for white women

ERIE, Pa. — Dr. Theresa Wheeling had always been a registered Republican. She voted third party in 2016 and then for Donald Trump in 2020, in large part because she felt it would be “hypocritical” to vote against her kids’ chosen jobs, which were related to various Trump administration policies and promises.

But one day after the Supreme Court upended federal abortion protections previously enshrined by Roe v. Wade, Wheeling changed her party affiliation. And this time around, she is voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I felt embarrassed to call myself a Republican,” Wheeling told NBC News. “Four years ago, I might have said no [to Harris], but now I do think she is more moderate. And I absolutely cannot vote for Trump.”

Voters like Wheeling, in counties and states like this one — Erie, Pennsylvania, a bellwether in the biggest battleground state — could decide the election. White women are a huge voting bloc, and since 2000, the GOP presidential ticket has won a majority of them. In 2016, the group helped launch Trump into the presidency. In 2020, he improved his margins among them, even though he lost his race for re-election.

But new polling from Galvanize Action — a nonpartisan group that’s been tracking the attitudes of more than 6,000 white women across 10 battleground states since June — shows this group may be up for grabs in 2024.

“We’re seeing such a huge divide [between men and women], that it really is becoming a women’s election,” says Jackie Payne, founder and executive director of Galvanize Action. “And so we see both Harris and Trump vying for moderate white women’s vote.”

The group’s September survey, shared first with NBC News and conducted 10 days after Trump and Harris’ only debate, shows Harris with a 2-point advantage over Trump among that group, 46%-44%, within the poll’s margin of error. In Galvanize Action’s June poll, when President Joe Biden was still the presumptive Democratic nominee, he and Trump were in a dead heat among white women.

“Then we started to see, once Harris entered the race, they started to shift a little bit toward Harris,” Payne said, adding that the survey numbers — like most public polling, currently — is “still very much within the margin of error, still very close.”

This group of voters, Payne reminds, “is by no means monolithic. And it’s not a runaway race for anybody, right? I think that’s such an important thing to realize. It’s a game of inches.”

Among white female voters, the economy ranks as the top issue, followed by preserving democracy, immigration and abortion rights. It’s on the issue of the economy that Trump and Republicans might find the most upside, with 41% of white female voters blaming the Biden-Harris administration for inflation and one-third believing the GOP “is much better” on the issue.

For Democrats, it’s abortion that could most make a difference with this voting bloc. Like Wheeling back in Erie, nearly half of white women told Galvanize that they would only vote for a candidate who would take action to protect abortion rights.

“What we hear from [moderate white women] is, even if I would never choose to have an abortion, this is a freedom that women that I love deserve and should be protected,” Payne said.

NBC News data spanning the last three presidential cycles only bolsters the idea that this group is in the middle of a realignment — however permanent it ends up being.

In an aggregate of NBC News polling from 2012, Republicans held a 5-point advantage with this group, only to slowly lose it over the next few election cycles. The gap in NBC News’ polling grew from there: to a 4-point advantage for Democrats in 2020 and now a 6-point edge in 2024.

The trend has been especially pronounced among younger white women ages 18-34. White women 35 to 54 years old remain in the GOP column, per this data, and at 55 and older, the trend line shows a toss-up between both parties.

It’s entirely possible this voting bloc is, and remains, a toss-up after 2024. It certainly will be for Wheeling.

Asked if her vote choice this year represented a permanent realignment, Wheeling, who is now registered as an independent, replied: “Maybe with my registration, but not with my voting. The voting is always based upon the person, the character and the issue.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com