| Hello hello! My TikTok feed this week has been exclusively Jo Koy Golden Globes discourse. Any hot takes? Send them my way (sgardner@politico.com) — I'm very invested at this point. Let's get to it: Nikki Haley is struggling to attract women voters — an irony for the only woman in the race. Recent polling suggests that women voters may be warming up to the former U.N. ambassador in early primary states — but only slightly. Nationally, Haley has fallen behind when it comes to wooing women voters. In an Emerson College poll from early December, she holds 19 percent of support among Republican men — and just 8 percent among Republican women. Those numbers are slightly better among likely Republican primary voters in early primary states. Based on Emerson polling, she has 25 percent support among both men and women in South Carolina, 20 percent support among women and 15 percent support among men in Iowa and 31 percent support among men and 26 percent among women in New Hampshire. Her performance with women in those key early primary states is vital to her long-shot path to securing the GOP nomination, which Donald Trump is still heavily expected to sweep. But her low national polling numbers with women are still likely to drag her down, says Lauren Leader, founder and CEO of the nonprofit All In Together, a women’s civic education organization. Leader, a frequent commentator on women in politics, says that Haley’s struggles with Republican women voters could be related to her stance on abortion — which has largely stayed the same for her entire campaign. At a Fox News Town Hall Monday night that focused on “Women’s Issues,” Haley was asked if she would sign a six-week abortion ban. Her response didn’t veer from her familiar talking points: A national six-week ban, she said, would never get 60 votes in the Senate, and we need to "be honest with the American people” about its likelihood of passing. But she also said that she’ll sign anything that comes to her desk. “Nikki Haley has the fundamental problem which is, primary voters are different than who she’s going to need to win the general,” Leader tells Women Rule. “It’s putting her in a box.” Leader says that Haley’s indirect answer to the abortion question is meant to give her some leeway with independents and swing voters in the general election while still pleasing primary voters. She says those answers could actually be frustrating Republican women, a faction of which may be breaking from the party’s mainstream ideology to support more leniency on abortion — particularly when it comes to the life of the mother, as suggested by pro-abortion victories in conservative states like Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio. “We know that there is a significant number of Republican women across the country who think abortion bans have gone too far,” Leader says. “But the reality of Republican politics today is that it is owned and led by hard core, pro-life organizations, and she can’t alienate them.” Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics, cautioned against putting too much weight on the polls, because of the low sample size and high margin of error that comes from looking at the crosstabs. But she says she doesn’t think the disparity stems from abortion. Instead, she suggested that it might be because women have been slowly leaving the Republican party for years, a trend which sped up during Trump’s presidency. She theorizes that the ones that have stuck by the party are more conservative and more likely to continue to support Trump. As Leader sees it, many women Trump voters can’t be peeled away from the former president, regardless of Haley’s abortion rhetoric — or any other changes she could make to her campaign. "He has a solid base of white women who are with him no matter what he says or does, and it has nothing to do with policy or his behavior,” says Leader. “They knew who he was in 2016, they knew who he was in 2020, and they certainly know who he is in 2024. That solid base is going nowhere.” Camille Mumford, a communications director at Emerson College Polling who also works on survey curation and analysis, suggested another contributing factor: “Republican women don't necessarily rally around women candidates in the same way that sometimes we see Democratic women [rally support.]” It’s a crucial moment for Haley, with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie dropping out of the race on Wednesday. She’s expected to pick up some of Christie’s supporters, which could be key for her in New Hampshire, where an early-January CNN poll shows her trailing Trump by just 7 percent, and Christie in third, with 12 percent of the vote. Martha MacCallum, who moderated this week’s FOX News town halls focused on women’s issues, tells Women Rule that suburban women are a key group to watch as the primary gets underway. “it's interesting to listen to the voices of what these women are thinking now,” MacCallum tells Women Rule. “Are they satisfied with Biden? Or are they willing to go back and vote for Trump again? Or support one of these other candidates who are in deep second places right now? It’s of great interest to me.”
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