One year after President Donald Trump roared back into the White House and swept the GOP into control of both branches of Congress, the Republican Party was confronted with a blaring warning sign in the 2025 off-year elections.
Exit polls showed women voters strongly favored Democratic gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia, helping them defeat their Republican opponents.
Women voters were among the top voting blocs that helped Democrats retake the House during the 2018 midterm elections under Trump’s first administration. They could once again boost Democrats into power during the 2026 elections.
But winning them over to the Republican side will take a mix of solutions, both political and cultural, that won’t be easy to implement.
“There’s a number of things that the Republican Party can be doing right now. And one, it’s acknowledging the diversity of the roles that women play in their households,” said Erin Maguire, a GOP consultant who has worked on presidential super PACs. “And starting with that, acknowledging that a lot of women manage their household budgets. This affordability argument that is happening across the country, the American people are screaming for affordability right now.”
Tiffany Justice, executive vice president of Heritage Action, claimed that appealing to women voters isn’t “complicated” but takes a common-sense approach.
“The issues women care about aren’t complicated: safety, parental rights, education freedom, protecting our kids, and affordability,” Justice said. “When the GOP speaks directly to those concerns, consistently, boldly, and without apology, women will respond, because they’re experiencing the consequences of Democratic policies every single day.”
Gov.-elects Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) and Mikie Sherrill (D-VA), as well as New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani (D), all ran on a campaign message of affordability that appealed to voters who still feel economic uncertainty under the Trump administration.
Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs have resulted in higher costs for consumers, and a record-breaking government shutdown will likely cost the nation hundreds of millions of dollars. Concerns about healthcare premium costs and exorbitant housing costs have also added to the unease many voters feel about their finances.
The Republican National Committee and the National Federation of Republican Women launched the nationwide Women Increasing Number in August, but that didn’t stop women from defecting to the Democrats. Spanberger and Sherrill, both moderate Democrats, won the total women’s vote, according to CNN’s exit polls.
They also won women voters of all age groups, including independent women voters, the black women vote, the white women vote, and the Latina vote. The only groups of women they didn’t win were white women without a college degree and Republican women voters. Mamdani narrowly won the women vote in his race.
MAGAZINE: WHAT NOVEMBER’S ELECTION RESULTS SAY ABOUT BOTH PARTIES
“Republicans are connecting with women by focusing on the issues that matter most to their families — affordability, safety, and a secure border,” Kiersten Pels, RNC press secretary, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “In addition, through the Women Increasing Numbers (WIN) initiative, the RNC is providing women with training, tools, and hands-on opportunities to lead on voter registration, poll watching, and get-out-the-vote efforts in their communities.”
Trump won reelection largely by claiming he could fix the economy after four years under former President Joe Biden’s leadership. Gas prices have fallen under Trump, but voter malaise over the economy has continued. Proposals such as a 50-year mortgage to ease housing costs have met swift blowback, while possible tariff exemptions for coffee and bananas are an implicit admission by the Trump administration that tariffs are hurting consumers.
“There’s an opportunity for an affordability revolution in the United States, and I think that Republicans need to start heeding that now,” Maguire said. “I also think that there is a second part to this, which is that, especially with younger women, that kind of 18 to 34 demographic, I think you’re looking at an ideological slant on cultural issues like healthcare for women. I think the Republican Party, and I’ve said this for you know, for years, does a really poor job talking to women in general about healthcare.”
Although abortion was not the top issue for voters during this year’s elections, women’s healthcare still remains a key topic as they vote. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion group, recently announced it would invest $80 million to reach 10.5 million voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Polls have also shown that cultural issues remain prominent among Gen Z women voters. A September NBC News survey showed that a slim majority of Gen Z men, 53%, disapprove of Trump’s performance, while 74% of Gen Z women disapprove of Trump’s performance. But when these young voters were asked to rank their personal definition of success, a significant fissure erupted.
Young women and men, 18-29, who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, ranked having a job or career you find fulfilling as their top choice. But young men who voted for Trump said having children was their top choice, and young women who voted for Trump said achieving financial independence was their top choice.
In the aftermath of the 2025 elections, posts on social media called for the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, to be repealed.
“Is it good that women can vote in America? I don’t think so, and here’s why,” said entrepreneur-turned-pastor Dale Partridge in a video posted on X.
“Hey @GOP, I know you are a mess after Tuesday, so let me spell this out clearly,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, responded. “Listening to quacks like this is the best way to ensure we never win a Presidential election again. We need better messaging not the disenfranchisement of half of American voters.”
Hawkins told the Washington Examiner in an interview that voices like Partridge’s don’t represent the views of the GOP. “These are not people that have ever been traditionally within the political kind of movement,” she said. “They might have voted for Trump, but they certainly don’t like Donald Trump.”
The GOP having conversations about fixing healthcare and housing costs and helping families survive on one spouse’s salary, Hawkins claimed, is necessary to appeal to women.
“If we have this serious conversation about appealing and winning over female voters, we need to have the conversation about homeownership … It’s an economic conversation. Women are very practical voters, despite what these fringe a**holes like to say,” Hawkins said. “They’re desperate for relevance. They’ve always been outside of the mainstream, and in the wake of [conservative activist Charlie Kirk‘s] assassination, have increased their podcasts and videos and outlandish posts because they know there’s this huge hole, and they want to be able to fill it.”
The effort to repeal the 19th Amendment also comes amid virulent sexism from conservative influencer Nick Fuentes, who blamed women for low birth rates in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in late October.
“The men are extremely conservative, increasingly,” Fuentes said on Carlson’s show. “The women are extremely liberal.” Carlson himself claimed during that same interview: “I’m a little sexist.”
Justice slammed attacks against women as distractions for the GOP. “Call it what it is: noise,” she said. “Fringe internet posters aren’t the GOP, and women know it. Republicans win when we stay focused on safety, affordability, and protecting our kids — not when we let leftist trolls set the narrative.”
She continued, “And let’s be honest: if the Republican Party spent as much time getting out the vote as some people do trolling online, we wouldn’t be in this position. Women want solutions. The movement that talks to moms about real-life concerns that matter to them will be the movement that wins them back.”
Comments from Carlson and Fuentes aren’t likely to convince women voters that the GOP is the better party than the Democrats. Nor are op-eds asking if women — or “liberal feminism” — ruined the workplace.
Katie Frost, a Georgia Republican strategist, also cautioned that extremist comments happen on both sides of the aisle.
“I have had people go online and say things to me from the Left, wishing physical harm on me. What I would just say is online discourse is not the real world, and a few crank tweets does not a policy make,” said Frost.
“And if you look at some of the content that was being consumed by female voters, it happens on both ends of the spectrum. Some of the content online is completely divorced from reality,” she added.
BIPARTISAN, ANTI-TRUMP GROUP CARRYING 2025 MOMENTUM INTO MIDTERM ‘AFFORDABILITY’ BLITZ
Frost instead called on the GOP to offer an “inspirational” message to women voters.
“We have to message to women that the Republican Party is the party that cares about keeping you and your family and your community safe,” Frost said. “We want you to be able to thrive. We want you to be able to afford housing. We want your children to be safe when they go to play at the park.”