Why Young Women Vote Left

It’s not because of online misogyny

The GOP faces a landslide loss in November unless they address a very important matter. No, it’s not immigration or the economy. It’s “redpill” influencers criticizing women on the internet. Twitter influencer Ashley St. Clair made this curious argument last week, demanding Republicans “purge” this menace from their midst. A number of other female influencers on the Right share this opinion.

It’s a bizarre argument. It insists on censorship that will hardly net any votes. Women don’t vote for the Left because of Andrew Tate. They do so because the Left, with the aid of prevailing moral norms, tailors its platform to appeal to unmarried, college-educated women. Even if Republicans somehow banned (or arrested) anyone who tweeted an empty egg carton at an egirl, the GOP still wouldn’t win the young woman vote.

The “Republicans lose because of redpill influencers like Andrew Tate and Pearl Davis”-argument fails to account for a lot of things. One, there is zero connection between the GOP and the redpillers. Tate is not a congressman, and there are no elected officials who share his views. No senators are claiming women lose sexual market value as they age. But they do attack Tate by name. Conservative media doesn’t promote the manosphere. Outside of Tucker Carlson interviewing Tate (which doesn’t equal an endorsement), conservatives emphasize how much they disdain the former kickboxer and those who share similar opinions. They go out of their way to condemn the redpill scene. What more could you ask for?

If this still not enough, this leaves the Right with the only option of demanding these misogynists face even more censorship. This is a terrible idea. Conservatives are supposed to be for free speech, not the ones demanding Big Tech silence different opinions that hurt our feelings. This is the logical step to insisting the Right “purge” these voices. They are prominent due to social media. The only way to “purge” them is to ban them from platforms. 

These manosphere types don’t really impact real-world politics. It’s just an online phenomenon. Female influencers make this into a problem because they are annoyed by their mentions. But that simply comes with using social media; it can be a tough place. If you gain a large following, you will get a lot of not-so-nice replies. It comes with the territory. I don’t demand Elon Musk ban those incredibly rude trolls who insist I’m not 6’2 and my IQ is actually 87. Everyone would think I’m ridiculous if I claimed Republicans will lose in a landslide unless they ban the people claiming I’m under six feet tall. 

It’s wrong to assume single, college-educated women are inherently BASED but vote against all their beliefs simply because they saw “incelmussolini69” use the word “roastie.” This is just silly. Most young women are not plugged into what people on Twitter/X are saying, especially those of the anonymous variety on the right-wing sphere. X’s user base is nearly 70 percent male and the number of active users is in decline. Young women are on TikTok and Instagram. They are probably aware of Tate and his views, but the only ones drawing a connection between him and the GOP are female influencers.

The other issue is believing a lot of women are inherently BASED. They are not. Women are naturally conformist and more susceptible to moral suasion. Society preaches liberalism as great and good, as the ‘kind’ perspective to hold. To fit in and be an official decent human being, unattached women gravitate towards liberal positions. The vast number of young women who posted black squares in support of BLM demonstrates this. Marriage and children do make women more conservative, but there’s a higher percentage of unmarried women now—and they decide elections.

For those unmarried ladies, Democrats promise them a dream life with their policies. This was the pitch of Barack Obama’s famous “Life of Julia” storybook ad. The narrative featured a fictional woman named Julia as she aged from 3 to 67. The campaign work aimed to show how at each stage of her life the Obama agenda would be there to help her, whether it’s with rules to mandate “equal pay” or pushing insurance companies to provide contraceptive care. With all this help, Julia could enjoy the dream life of a yuppie life free of men. The story does feature Julia having a son at age 31, but no father is depicted. Thanks to Democrats, women no longer need men to step up. They just need the government to subsidize their lifestyle choices.

This is an attractive message for many college-educated women. They want a fun life in the city where they can live out their favorite shows, go on exotic vacations, know HR rules favor them at work, and not have to worry about pregnancy dragging them down. Democrats promise this in ads like “Life of Julia”. Republicans don’t really have a message for young, college-educated women outside of the crime issue. Unfortunately, the AWFLs are too committed to the moral zeitgeist to allow crime to tear them from liberalism.

Democrats are especially primed to do well among young women thanks to abortion. Women deeply care about this issue. Fifty-six percent of female voters under 30 said it was their top issue in the midterms. Sixty-nine percent of young women say abortion access influences where they choose to live. This pro-abortion fervor helped Democrats win in 2022. 

All the while, Republicans and prominent conservatives are trying their best to help Democrats with the abortion issue. Rather than get this issue off the national agenda, many right-wingers want the GOP to run hard on abortion. Many commentators can’t resist calls to ban birth control, IVF, and even genetic testing. Unlike with anons calling egirls roasties, these comments are picked up and provide valuable material for Democratic campaign ads. Female voters will be made well aware of Republicans’ opinions on abortion.

Ironically, many of the figures encouraging the GOP to make abortion/birth control a campaign issue are the ones complaining the Right is losing women voters. Some self-awareness would go a long way here.

The only tried-and-true way to make women support the Right is to push them towards marriage. But achieving that is a very complicated matter. In the meantime, Republicans need to work to deflate the turnout among these women. That involves obscuring abortion as a campaign issue. Just have Republicans declare it’s a states issue and wait until after electoral victories to move on it. Otherwise apolitical women will show up to vote if they feel Republicans are going to take their birth control away. This has been a successful Democratic tactic well before Andrew Tate was ever a thing. 

Young women are going to be a strong Democratic bloc for years to come. This problem won’t be solved unless there’s a social transformation that leads to more family formation. Until that happens, the best Republicans can do is mitigate the Democrats’ turnout advantage.

The best way to do that is to avoid abortion as a campaign issue. The Right still struggles to figure out how to do this. That conundrum, not online sexism, accounts for GOP electoral woes. To think otherwise is to find yourself among the extremely online.