Republican candidates are missing the mark with messaging when it comes to women and independent voters, conservative activist Heather Higgins argued in the latest episode of “Pod Force One.”
Higgins, CEO of Independent Women’s Voice, said Republicans should take lessons from President Trump and former President Ronald Reagan to learn how to communicate effectively with women and swing voters.
“Women are, from the data I’ve seen, 53%, sometimes they even say 54% of the electorate,” Higgins told “Pod Force One” host Miranda Devine.
“They tend to vote at a 10-point higher rate than a man does. So, you would think that your focus would be a lot on this larger slice of the electorate that votes more than the males do, but … the Republican messaging tends to not be focused on that.”
Women, Higgins continued, “really object to being told what to think, and if you think about the standard Republican ad, it kind of hits you over the head with a sledgehammer telling you what to think.”
“That does not work with women, but that’s how the GOP tends to talk,” she lamented.
The longtime conservative activist and businesswoman noted that “it’s not just women” who think this way.
“We have a lot of data that shows that if you’re talking to men who self-describe as independents, they don’t want to be told what to think either,” Higgins said. “You have to figure out some other way to communicate with them that you allow them to make up their own minds about things.”
Higgins’ remarks come as Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is under fire for running a controversial ad featuring his opponent Amy Acton’s long-estranged mother, Donna Arthur, calling her daughter a “liar’ as she urges Ohioans not to vote for her.
Acton said her mother’s husband sexually abused her as a child while Arthur stood by her alleged rapist.
The ad was widely criticized, including by Democrats and Republicans, with Acton’s brother charging that Ramaswamy was trying to turn “the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point.”
However, it’s not just Republicans that could be leaving votes on the table ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm election.
“What’s interesting this cycle is that also the left hasn’t really been focused on women as a women’s issue type thing either,” Higgins argued. “Maybe that’s because they can no longer define what a woman is, so they no longer have a suite of issues for women.
“So, there’s been a sort of absence on both sides.”
Higgins further explained that women tend to focus on politics later in life and “when they need to, when it’s urgent.”
They also don’t tend to respond as well to “fear-based” messaging, according to the IWV CEO.
“They tend to resonate with a way of thinking which is less about ‘Oh no!’ fear-based, ‘They’re socialists,’ and more about is somebody being harmed, is this fair and what are the benefits to you and to your family, or the harms to you and your family and the people that you care about?” she told Devine. “So, keeping that in mind is really important when structuring those arguments.”
Higgins pointed to Trump’s use of “extreme emotional language, including telling people that he loves them” as something other Republicans should use in their messaging.
“How many Republican politicians have you ever heard say they love you? Right? It just doesn’t happen,” she said. “And I think part of the reason that Trump, as well as Reagan, are far better communicators than most Republicans is that they started out as Democrats.
“They understand the power of empathy. They understand the power of story. They understand the power of narrative and the power of connection, which is largely missing from the policy geek or lawyer or business guy who, because of facts and data, has gotten into Republican politics.”
Higgins continued, “It’s not that they don’t care. It’s just not part of their pattern to express it. He expresses it all the time.”
