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The 2022 Winds are Shifting for Democrats
Women are registering to vote in surprising numbers and Biden’s approval rate has begun to rise
Since June 24th, when the Supreme Court eviscerated the right to an abortion, significantly more women than men have been registering to vote, according to data compiled by Tom Bonier of TargetSmart. In Pennsylvania, the margin is 17% more women than men, and that is in a state where registered women previously outnumbered men by 4 points. In Ohio, the tilt is 11%. In Michigan, women are out-registering men by 8 points. Many of these women are registering as Democrats — for example, in Wisconsin, women have out-registered men by almost 15 points since the Dobbs decision came down. 52% of all the newly registered voters there are signing up as Democrats, compared to just 17% as Republicans.
The tilt is most pronounced in states where reproductive rights are in danger; in pro-abortion rights states like New York and Rhode Island there is no meaningful gender gap among new registrants, Bonier reports. The numbers aren’t huge; in Michigan we’re talking about less than 13,000 new voters out of more than seven million. But there too Democrats are out-registering Republicans. This is doubly important because party identification is the strongest predictor of how someone will vote; by taking away a…