Republican pollster Frank Luntz said that former President Trump is driving the gender gap among 2024 election voters with insults toward his political opponents.
CNN’s anchor Michael Smerconish presented a recent Fox News poll showing a 22-point gender gap between males and females, where men favored Trump by 12, while women favored Vice President Kamala Harris by 10.
“Well, the problem is that Kamala Harris reminds men of their first wife and Donald Trump reminds women of their first husband’s divorce lawyer,” Luntz said during his Saturday appearance on CNN. “And it’s actually kind of true. I know it’s funny, but it’s kind of true.”
“And Trump is losing, is actively going out of his way, to insult his way, to this huge gender, and it’s not a gap, it’s a chasm,” he said. “And as you said in the introduction, we’ve never seen this before. I actually believe that there are going to be divorces because of the battle between them.”
Luntz, who criticized Trump’s behavior on the campaign trail earlier this week, stated the GOP presidential nominee needs to refrain from hurling insults at his political foes, focus on the future and leave the “anger” behind. The pollster’s advice is similar to what other Republicans have been urging him to do: key in on policy.
“First, don’t insult your opponent for how they look, how they speak,” Luntz said. “Women can’t stand that. Second, they expect you to focus on the future, not on anger about the past. And that’s again, the exact opposite of what Trump is actually doing.”
“And third, particularly now we’ve had arguably, eight years of this rough and tumble kind of politics,” he continued. “The economy has been challenging. Inflation has clearly made lives more difficult for so many people, and that you want to you want to lean into that. You acknowledge it, you show people a solution. You give them ideas for how they can change it.”
The longtime pollster said that Harris gave her version of the solution yesterday, referencing her campaign rally in North Carolina where she unveiled her economic plan.
“That’s exactly what Harris did yesterday. You may disagree with what she’s saying, but at least she’s addressing it,” Luntz said.
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