Women hold the key to the 2026 elections — especially ‘skippers’ and ‘flippers’

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It may not seem like it, but Democrats should be worried. Although President Trump’s approval ratings have been in the doldrums and inflation is angering MAGA voters, the fragile agreement with Iran might help Trump’s numbers and revive Republicans’ chances in November. Against all odds, a Democratic midterm election blowout could still slip out of reach.

The facts don’t lie. Republicans have a massive electoral war chest. Recent primaries have proven Trump loyalists can still win big, and the Supreme Court’s recent redistricting decision is creating a race to the bottom that Democrats are positioned to lose.

If Democrats want to capture Congress this fall, we can’t afford to rely on continued missteps from the administration. We must swell our numbers enough to outweigh the effects of Trump’s fluctuating fortunes, and that has to include winning over two groups we often hesitate to tackle: so-called “skippers” and “flippers” — that is, former Democratic voters and disaffected Republicans.

If that sounds impossible, don’t worry. Women have got this.

Trump has a serious problem when it comes to women’s votes. A recent New York Times-Siena poll shows 66 percent of women disapproving of his job performance, and an Emerson College poll from late April showed Democrats with a 21-point midterm lead over Republicans among women. Unmarried women — on average about 25 percent of the electorate in battleground states — have been at least 14 points less supportive of Trump than unmarried men. In general, 60 percent of young women disapprove of Trump, whereas only 51 percent among young men disapprove.

If these women turn out for Democrats this November, Republicans run the risk of repeating the 2018 midterms, when Democrats landed the biggest margin with either gender in the 21st century. Recent Democratic victories in New Jersey, Virginia, Texas and Wisconsin may be a harbinger of things to come.

But they also might not. Midterms are notorious for weak turnout among young and lower-income voters, two groups Democrats depend on, and die-hard MAGA voters — as many as 87 percent of whom supported Trump’s war in Iran — could turn out in huge numbers. Throw in a slew of newly gerrymandered Republican House districts and Republicans could be right back on top.

Democrats’ best chance of insuring against this won’t come from redistricting plans that can be blocked by state supreme courts. It will come from ensuring women turn out — especially Skippers and Flippers.

Skippers are women who voted for Democrats in previous elections but sat out in 2024. My team’s July 2025 analysis, Understanding the Missing Biden Voters, found that 2024 Democratic “skippers” numbered in the double-digit millions, so winning back even a fraction of their support could tip the scales.

Indeed, if Democratic “skipper” women had turned out for Kamala Harris, she would have beaten Trump by 8000 votes in Wisconsin and erased up to 88 percent of Trump’s margin in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Our analysis suggests a range of issues that could get skipper women to the polls this year, from cost of living to healthcare expenses and “chaos” at home and abroad.

Then there are the flippers — women who voted Republican in 2024 but might switch sides this time. Winning even a small slice of their votes could swing the outcome, since each flipped vote has a double impact, subtracting a vote from one candidate and adding it to the other’s total.

My team’s analysis of 2024 exit polls showed that if less than 2 percent of Trump’s White non-college educated voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had gone for Harris, she would have won the election. It’s likely that flipping a similarly small percentage of women would make the difference this year, even in newly-minted Republican districts.

Granted, the two largest female voter demographics — White women and non-college-graduate women — have historically been strong Trump supporters. In 2024, he got 53 percent of White women’s votes and 63 percent of White non-college women, and exit polls showed that one in nine women who found Trump’s views too extreme voted for him anyway.

But the scales are shifting. Five separate mid-May polls — from Fox News, CNN, NPR/PBS/Marist, Pew Research Center and CBS News-YouGov — showed a majority of non-college-educated White Americans now disapprove of Trump’s performance, and in early April, Trump’s approval rating among White, non-college educated women had fallen by 28 points since the 2024 election.

These numbers ought to frighten Republican strategists, but they won’t automatically translate into Democratic votes. We need to reach and persuade these women to turn out, especially if the Iran war actually ends and gas prices fall. Democrats must do the work to mobilize skippers and create flippers. If we want to lock up a victory in November, these women hold the keys.

Celinda Lake is a longtime Democratic pollster and the president of Lake Research Partners.

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2024 election

2026 midterm elections

Celinda Lake

Democrats

Kamala Harris

Women

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