Could women stump the Trump?

It would seem the ladies don’t have much fondness for any of the candidates in any great capacity, whether they sport a D or an R, but of all the Presidential hopefuls, Trump is not doing too well with the fairer sex.

According to a March NBC/WSJ poll, Trump has 52% of women GOP voters saying they could support him, but a 47% saying they can’t. Compare that with Ted Cruz, who holds 64% vs 32% respectively.

Trump didn’t fair much better in other polls either, with a 42% unfavorability rating in a CNN/ORC poll, and this against Ted Cruz, who sits at 35%.

Combining polls doesn’t help Trump fair any better. In fact, it just makes him look much, much worse. Putting together CNN/ORC, Fox, Quinnipiac, and MMC polls shows Trump with a massive unfavorability among women at -42 points, vs Cruz’s -17.

With such an underwhelming show of support from women, Trump could find this to be a major thorn in his side. Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner has gone over the polling in more detail, and points out that women may hold more sway over Trump’s political aspirations than he’d like.

“Still, the massive unfavorable rating Trump holds among all women will severely hurt him in the general election if he is the GOP nominee, as women make up more than half of the electorate. Trump is going to have to work incredibly hard in the general election (again, if he’s the nominee) to win over women voters, and he’s given no hints about how he will do so.”

Indeed, Trump’s attention toward women voters seems to be something of an afterthought. His comments about how much he loves and supports women always seem to come after a blunder of some kind, and feel more like a reassurance than a focus.

Women are more than excused for not finding Trump all that attractive, either. Whether it be his insulting statements about women he doesn’t like, saying he wants to punish women who get abortions, his bragging about sleeping around with married women, or his ongoing feud with Megyn Kelly, it would be hard for a woman to actually find him to be a guy who respects her sex in any capacity.

In response, Trump has begun putting his wife, Melania, in the limelight by wheeling her out on campaign stops and putting her behind microphones. He even recently had her sitting next to him during his recent interview with Hannity, in order to tell everyone how much he respects men and women equally, but this move may be a day late, and a dollar short. To anyone noting Trump’s behavior toward women, it feels more like a clumsy attempt to gain approval points than an actual strategy.

Still, weirder things have worked for Trump during his campaign that have helped him, but I wouldn’t discount the power of women in any election, and neither should Trump.