Donald Trump’s former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said the GOP presumptive presidential nominee doesn’t need to reach college educated women voters to win the election.
Bannon complained about political consultants telling the Trump campaign that he needs to modify his message “because you gotta chase college educated white women.” (He used air quotes around the phrase “college educated.”) Bannon added, “All the karens and women of color… you’re gonna pick up a few but it’s just a waste of time and money.”
Trump strategist Steve Bannon says Trump doesn’t need to reach suburban women voters: It’s a waste of time and money. Who says we need to reach them? pic.twitter.com/YimB55ClSm
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 2, 2024
Bannon believes female college graduates won’t change their minds about Trump, who they believe “personifies the patriarchy.” He added those consultants are telling the Trump campaign, ‘You gotta get the suburban women,’ but Bannon questions, “Says who? Says who? The ones that are gettable are out there, they can listen to the message of MAGA and the message of President Trump.”
[Note: Right before Election Day 2020, Republican pollster Sarah Longwell, who founded the group Republican Voters Against Trump, interviewed eight college-educated white women who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and only one said she would vote for the president again.]
The conventional wisdom Bannon defies derives from the common perception that, as Bloomberg reports, the “prized voting bloc of typically educated, upper-middle-class, and often, but not always married White women, has often been pivotal in elections and will be key to building a winning coalition this November.”
Bannon believes that “prized” bloc is overvalued — or at least too expensive to turn around. Trump has already followed his advice in some ways, especially when he said he didn’t think he “needed” many of the Nikki Haley voters from the GOP primaries, despite Haley’s candidacy often taking 20% of the votes — even after she ended her campaign.
[NOTE: Nearly 570,000 voters in the critical swing states of Nevada, North Carolina, and Michigan voted for Haley to be the GOP nominee. Haley’s supporters “tend to be moderate and college educated,” the New York Times reported in March.]
If Donald Trump and Steve Bannon don’t want the suburban White women vote, Joe Biden would like to add to his advantage in the category by adding Trump’s Haley cast-offs.
“Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters,” Biden said in a statement after Trump’s dismissal. “I want to be clear — there is a place for them in my campaign,” the President said.