By Mica Rosenberg, Gabriella Borter, PJ Huffstutter, Mimi Dwyer, and Chris Kahn
ARCHBALD, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – Marygrace Vadala’s 82-year-old mother has been a fan of President Donald Trump since she presented the exhibition “The Apprentice. “She voted enthusiastically for him in 2016.
But in the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, while watching White House briefings, Vadala’s mother, Grace Webber, expressed her first doubts.
“Why don’t you pay attention to medical experts?”Vadala, a 48-year-old home nurse, remembers asking Webber.
Weeks later, Webber landed in the hospital with a gastrointestinal bleed, temporarily contracted the coronavirus and spent nearly a month on a ventilator. In May, Vadala, a devout Catholic, said goodbye to Webber on FaceTime, grabbing her mother’s rosary. .
Vadala, who lives in a suburb of Scranton, Pennsylvania, had been a Republican all her life, but concluded that Trump lacked the “integrity, reliability and responsibility” she valued and sought. It has a main stimulant for Trump’s Democrats. even agreeing to appear in an online ad for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign.
“I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut on this one, ” he said. “I let my mother’s voice be heard. “
Women appear to have played a role in Biden’s access to the US presidency. But it’s not the first time They were at the forefront of the highest American participation in at least a century, voting at higher rates than men and more than part of the electorate (56%) he chose the former vice president over 48% of the men, as they go on Edison Research’s polls.
The media raced biden on Saturday after taking the decisive lead in Pennsylvania.
Not only did women take Biden: Trump lost the floor among the male electorate in 2020 compared to 2016, but the key to Biden’s good fortune was his achievements among white women with knowledge at university in battlefield states, such as Vadala, which resulted in greater numbers than for Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic rival , 4 years ago.
(For a graph of the results, see https://t. co/dk8Akg6XxG?amp=1)
African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latinos supported Biden’s bid for white space opposed to Trump across vast majority nationwide, and even more than African-American and Latino men.
Trump has not conceded the contest, even though Biden’s advantage in counting votes is increasing. Recounts most likely appear in states with narrow margins, but Trump would have to cancel effects in at least 3 states to win. Trump’s legal battles are also widely noted as unlikely to replace the outcome.
Trump’s difficulties in attracting female electorate predated this election and the pandemic. Allegations of harassment and sexual assault, which he vehemently denies, haunt him for years. The day after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, thousands of people protested their election at a women’s march in Washington, D. C. and other cities across the country.
Still, Trump has remained in the company of a female demographic organization through any of the election: white without a school degree, adding some of Vadala’s parents in Pennsylvania.
To capture a variety of reviews about the 2020 career, Reuters spoke to 42 women in 12 states: Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio, Nebraska and Indiana, where the electorate turned and opposed it. Trump.
Republicans who were previously unwavering told Reuters that, for the first time, they had crossed the lines of the party to vote for Biden. Some were young electorates for the first time, and opted for Biden just because they saw the much worse alternative. they never liked or voted for Trump.
Among Trump’s supporters, some were enthusiasts whose votes and organization on his behalf helped him exceed expectations in several states.
Regardless of their differences, many women have been involved in political activism for the first time in this presidential campaign.
Biden’s supporters said in interviews that they were motivated by consecutive crises last year, adding the coronavirus pandemic, economic unrest and protests against racism and police brutality.
Paula McCabe, 44, from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, who lost her job at a pandemic casino gadget manufacturer, said she was more motivated than ever to vote this year.
“I never went to an election that literally meant that the whole country was going to collapse and burn or despite everything to thrive,” said McCabe, who voted for Biden. “For me, this is probably the greatest vital vote I’ve ever lived for. “
THE SHADOW OF THE VIRUS
Women in the United States, in many ways, have borne the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic and its economic benefits. They have left the paint force at higher rates than men, according to statistics from the U. S. Bureau of Labor, while juggling home education and People who stay in their jobs are more likely to work in frontline jobs, i. e. in medicine or social services, according to the Center for Economic and Political Research in Washington Dc
A Reuters vote before the election showed that COVID-19, the disease that killed more than 236,000 Americans this year, is the dominant challenge for the entire electorate, and even more so for women. will be better able to deal with the virus, compared to 44% who think the same about Trump.
But revisions to the importance of coronavirus to his vote were radically divided along political lines: 24% of Biden’s electorate said it was the factor that mattered most to them, compared to 5% of Trump’s supporters.
Ellen Peters, an 80-year-old great-grandmother from the small town of Rossville, Indiana, said she knew she was more threatened by COVID-19 and published her early poll for Trump, who won the state smoothly, because she liked to focus on reviving the economy.
“I’m worried because I hate bad health and I’d hate what I would do to my family,” said Peters, who didn’t graduate from college and retired this year from his family’s accounting firm. “But I’m old. ” I can fall asleep tonight and never wake up too. “
MAKING HISTORY
Fear of COVID-19 still provides Denise Callaway in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, after wasting several friends on the disease, but her number one motivation to vote differently: the ability to choose Kamala Harris as the first African-American woman and vice president.
Callaway, 64, said she cried when Biden announced Harris as her running mate. Seeing a portrait in his living room of his great-great-grandmother, an eye-catching figure with piercing eyes and upper cheekbones, Callaway saw that she had probably been enslaved. Callaway felt she helped in this historic election, she said, for her ancestor, for herself and for her daughters.
Callaway, a public relations executive and retired consultant, connected with Biden’s Crusade in Wisconsin through friends from her black sorority, began applying by phone, and participated in weekly Zoom prayer circles with other volunteers.
Black women, who vote overwhelmingly as Democrats and at higher rates than black men, have never been big supporters of Trump, but this year they have increasingly criticized the president, according to a Reuters poll. According to Edison’s data, 91% of black women supported Biden, 11 percentage points more than black men.
Racial justice issues were for the electorate in general. More than part of the entire electorate and 87% of Biden’s electorate said they had a favorable view of the Black Lives Matter movement. Activists helped launch national protests after Minnesota police killed George Floyd, a black man.
Callaway and her husband raised their son and their two daughters, now adults, in Milwaukee County, one of the few for Clinton in 2016 when Trump won Wisconsin with fewer than 23,000 votes, in a component that brings decades of production losses.
Callaway, daughter of an automotive executive, recalls Biden’s efforts to stabilize the automotive industry in 2009 during the Obama administration, and says Trump broke his promises to create production jobs in rust Belt states.
This year, Biden pushed Wisconsin back through a margin almost as narrow as Trump won in 2016, unless a recount adjusted the outcome, which rarely happens in the US election.
After days of anxiously watching the votes arrive, when the election called biden’s favor on Saturday, Callaway wrote an email from a line: “Ok. Wait for !!!”
YOUR FIRST VOTE
In Arizona, a young Latino electorate such as 19-year-old Yazmin Sagastume helped Biden take the lead, even though the votes were still counted on Saturday. If Biden wins, he would be the first Democratic presidential candidate elected in the state since 1996.
Sagastume spent Tuesday’s elections leaving voter guides on more than a hundred doors in Phoenix with two friends. His votes for Biden were the first to be elected to president.
Nationally, Biden overwhelmingly won that of other young people as a whole, winning the votes of 62% of 18-29 year olds.
Sagastume grew up in Phoenix, the youngest of five children of a mother from Mexico and a father from Guatemala. Now in college, it has become a politically active high school.
Sagastume said she is not a big fan of Biden; he supported Vermont progressive Senator Bernie Sanders at number one Democrat and relates much more to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 31-year-old New York congresswoman than a white man in his seventies.
However, for months, he called the young Hispanic electorate to inspire them to vote.
“We’re just looking to get Trump out,” he said. That’s the goal. “
As a dismayed, she recently learned that two older brothers supported Trump and that in some parts of the country, Trump has done more than expected among Latino voters, a diverse population that includes many political conservatives.
Trump won 45% of the Vote of Hispanics in Florida, 11 issues more than in 2016, where many Cuban and Venezuelan voters appreciated the president’s stance opposed to socialist or communist governments.
In states along the U. S. -Mexico border, where Trump has implemented some of his strictest immigration policies, his has grown. In Texas and Arizona, Trump won 38% and 32% of Hispanic women, respectively, much over 4 years ago.
Teresa Mendoza, 48, a true real estate manager in Mesa, Arizona, near Phoenix, is the daughter of Mexico’s migrant agricultural staff, but said she is not discouraged by Trump’s immigration stance. More border security is needed, he said, because it is more damaging – with more drug trafficking and human trafficking – than when his parents emigrated in the 1970s, he said.
In addition, he said, Trump’s policies, such as cutting taxes and regulations, have boosted his family’s finances, while Obama’s Affordable Care Act has a higher cost of his personal health insurance.
Mendoza said he received a tax refund under Trump after years of paying giant tax bills. The rest of Trump’s many environmental regulations have also made it less difficult for her husband, who runs a flooring company, to get the most out of the chemicals he needs, she said. Said.
After the election called Biden, Mendoza said he would settle for the effects if there was an “audit” of the votes, showing unverified data he had noticed online about unrest in voting machines and irregularities at some polling stations.
‘KICK IN THE TEETH’
As the crusade progressed, relations deteriorated in a deeply divided country.
A fifth of the U. S. electorate said he stopped talking to a member of the family circle or lost a friend in the election, according to a Reuters/Ipsos ballot on Election Day.
Denise Auton, a 46-year-old retired social worker living outdoors in Raleigh, North Carolina, said her husband revealed on his birthday that he voted for Trump.
“It’s like I’ve been kicked in the teeth,” she says in tears. Auton lives on a 43-acre farm in Middlesex, surrounded by cotton fields. Sitting on the porch, she described how she and her 13-year-old son, Hannah, disagree with her husband, Jeff, and son, Bryce. “My son is 15 years old and, of course, listens to his father. He finds it funny when Trump says all those improvised things, but in truth) he’s just a bully. “
Having worked with other people with disabilities, she was disappointed after hearing her husband’s family circle, also Trump supporters, mock Biden’s stuttering.
Baptiste says he discovered that Trump’s prospects and women’s remedy are “degrading. “At the counter of your kitchen is a pink Bible with floral trims on a leaf of Biden-Harris decals. On the back of your SUV, a decal says “STD – Stop the Donald, don’t let the infection spread. “
But on Facebook, it works more carefully. Most of those around him are Trump supporters.
Auton grew up in a circle of Republican relatives but turned away from his roots when he attended a liberal arts university and campaigned for Obama.
But she has never been so passionate about politics before and asked her husband, who supports Trump, to take her to the county to demonstrate Biden-Harris’ symptoms and, with her daughter, wrote postcards to inspire others to vote.
On Saturday, Trump leads in North Carolina, but the race is still too close to calling the state.
More than a portion of white women who graduated from school in North Carolina, such as Auton, voted biden, while theirs for Trump fell 8 percentage points since 2016.
“The intensity is so strong with this choice,” he said. “There seems to be a lot more at stake. “
MORE FALTER AMONG FARMERS
Even among rural women, one of Trump’s most powerful bases in 2016, the president has noticed that his margins are shrinking.
Nationally, Trump won 54% of america’s rural vote. Usa, according to Edison’s exit survey, 7 issues less than in 2016, just over a rurally supported portion of Biden this year.
A 37-year-old Rebecca Seidel who runs a small sustainable dairy farm in Berks County, Pennsylvania, with her husband.
For most of her life, her prospects were strongly connected to those of her Republican father, but after Trump’s election in 2016, Seidel left the Republican Party and registered as a Democrat, partly because of what she saw as a factor of racism and Trump. protectionist industrial policies.
In the 2020 campaign, Seidel’s considerations took things to the next point when she and her entire circle of relatives contracted COVID-19. Her mom was hospitalized for four days and Seidel lost her sense of smell and taste, which hindered her plans to open a small cheese. “doing business,” he said.
Recently, in a shop of local agricultural origin, he put ice on an organization of men chatting while packing animal feed. None of them wore a mask, a sign to her that some in her network were taking the pandemic seriously enough.
“It’s become a political statement,” Seidel said. “Some other people say that if you wear a mask, you’re not from Trump. “
‘NO TRUMP’
Trump has long counted among the white evangelical Christian electorate, and 76% of them voted for him this time, according to Edison, but that’s four percentage points less than in 2016.
He’s Hyla Winters’ vote.
Winters, 71, a fervent evangelical and normal player at a Mega Church in Las Vegas, voted for Trump in 2016, but over time was discouraged by her attacks on alleged enemies.
“His habit is appalling,” said Winters, a retired school administrator. “It’s embarrassing. “
Although he did not embrace the entire Democratic platform, he regarded Biden as a “decent person. “
She had supported Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U. S. -Mexico border, but was horrified by his “zero tolerance” policy in which young immigrants were for the forte of their parents.
He connected online to look for tactics to worry more politically, looking for a YouTube video on how to start a blog. In February, he introduced one, nottrump. net.
When protests against police brutality broke out, he contacted a black friend to learn more about what “white privilege” meant.
“She gave me homework, ” said Winters, adding books and resources.
During early voting, she volunteered for seven days at a polling place to answer questions and direct others to voting booths. On the last day, a row crossed the car parking lot even before the polls opened. Winters surprised by participation.
“I’m ashamed to admit it, it’s a replacement for me,” Winters said of his political involvement. “I’m 71 years old and this is the first time I’ve participated in a presidential election. “
However, it had bad news on Wednesday: the COVID-19 test was done.
“The only position I had with other people that I didn’t know when I was voting early,” he recalls, telling a touch tracker from a fitness branch. He dressed in a mask under an outdoor tent, but said some voters did not have a face mask. .
Her husband, a Trump supporter, also tested positive. Although neither has serious symptoms, they will now have to be quarantined together. “They may have more time for some of their political differences,” Winters said.
She hadn’t been very involved with the virus when she volunteered, but even if she had, she said, “I would have done it anyway. It’s too vital for me not to. “
(Reporting through Mica Rosenberg and Chris Kahn in New York; Gabriella Borter in Archbald and Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania and Middlesex, North Carolina; PJ Huffstutter in Chicago and Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Mimi Dwyer in Phoenix, Arizona. Edited by Colleen Jenkins and Julie Marquis)