Young Women Feel Left Behind in Donald Trump’s Economy
This story was originally published by The 19th. More to Her Story is a member of The 19th News Network.
Concerned. Nervous. Uncertain. Worried. Pessimistic. Bad.
Those were some of the words used by young women in battleground states when asked how they felt about the direction of the United States in two recent focus groups convened by Navigator Research, a Democratic-aligned polling and public opinion research project, and observed by The 19th.
Women in their 20s to early 30s said they feel left behind in the economy; are anxious and apprehensive about the future; and largely don’t think politicians, including President Donald Trump, understand their struggles. Some women shared difficult experiences they were going through, from losing a job to rebuilding after incarceration and being a single parent after the death of a partner.
The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.
“They really had some real things that they were grappling with and not feeling like they were getting the support that they needed from the government, that government was just not there for them, was not understanding them,” said Margie Omero, principal at Democratic polling firm GBAO who conducted the two focus groups. “They were on their own, and in a way that was really striking and powerful.”
The long-standing gender gap in how men and women vote widened even further in the 2024 election, especially among 18- to 29-year-olds. In the years since, politicians and commentators have devoted lots of attention to the economic, social and psychological struggles of young men, whose significant rightward shift helped fuel Trump’s 2024 victory.
But there has been far less attention paid to the state of young women, who face the same economic conditions as men and tend to register to vote and participate in politics, especially Democratic primaries, at higher rates. While their shift was less dramatic than among men, young Black women and Latinas also moved away from Democrats in 2024. And dissatisfaction with the economy and current political leadership among women who voted for Trump in 2024 could provide an opening for Democratic candidates running in many of the key congressional and statewide races on the ballot in 2026.
“There’s lots of ways that we are not giving women who make up a majority of the electorate the attention that their numbers warrant,” Omero said.
The first focus group consisted of eight independent and Democratic-leaning young women of color. The second featured seven Republican and Republican-leaning independent women who didn’t vote for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. Participants in both groups, who were in their 20s to early 30s, had a mix of education levels and family backgrounds.
Both focus groups were made up of women who don’t strongly identify with a political party or partisan label. The majority of women in the first group voted for Harris, and most in the second group voted for Trump. Almost all were overwhelmingly negative about the direction the United States is taking. The most positive word used by a participant was “blah.”
A 31-year-old Native American woman in Georgia who voted for Harris said that just looking at her phone feels “overwhelming.”
“Wars, the war in Iran, inflation, the economy as a whole,” she said. “When I get on LinkedIn, it’s depressing, as far as the job market. So it’s a combination of things.”
“I feel like no matter where you look, it’s always negative. And I feel like another aspect is people are really polarized now,” said a 21-year-old Asian woman in Wisconsin who voted for Harris. “It’s very hard to have a civil discussion about anything. And I think that’s what contributes to even more divisiveness right now.”
Women said that they feel squeezed on all sides by inflation and rising prices, a stagnating job market, and milestones like homeownership becoming increasingly out of reach.
“I think the economy is really going in a downward spiral,” said a 29-year-old Black woman in Michigan who voted for Trump. “I feel like jobs aren’t paying enough for people to survive and having to take care of our children and stuff like that. I feel like a lot of people have been losing their homes. I just feel like the economy is just really for the upper class. It’s not for the lower class as much.”
Multiple women cited the United States’ war with Iran and its impact on gas prices as a source of anxiety.
“The gas prices is what’s currently bothering me because I drive a lot,” said a 31-year-old White woman in Arizona who voted for Trump.
“I’m a little bit frustrated just because I didn’t think we were going to be getting into a war,” she added. “I guess it’s just an unexpected thing.”
Several women in the focus groups said they were taking on side jobs and cutting back on spending by canceling subscriptions and driving less often to make ends meet.
“I feel like the economy is getting a lot worse, and I feel like we’re worse off than we have been in a while. I wanted to sell my house and get into a new one, and the price of getting a new house is almost unattainable, especially for people like me that are in their mid to late 20s,” said a 29-year-old Hispanic woman from Pennsylvania who voted for Trump. “I have a lot of friends that have to pick and choose whether they go hungry or not have money to go to work.”
Omero said many of those who voted for Trump in 2024 did so not out of ardent support for his candidacy, but rather out of discontent with the status quo.
“People who voted for Trump are not feeling like the economy is going well. They don’t feel like Trump’s handling it well,” she said. “We see that in polling, we heard it in those focus groups, we see it all the time. Even folks who are not necessarily regretters are like, ‘Hopefully it’s going to be OK.’”
Many women in the focus groups said they get most of their news not from traditional media but from social media and independent creators. Some women had heard of efforts to make food healthier by removing preservatives and artificial ingredients, but most weren’t familiar with the acronym MAHA (Make America Healthy Again), spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services.
Some women in both groups did express skepticism about medications, including the birth control pill. “I don’t think anything’s safe, any medicine,” said the 31-year-old Native American woman who voted for Harris.
“If they have to label all of the things that could go wrong, it’s probably because it has affected women or whoever’s taking them and they’ve seen the negative effects and have to therefore warn you about it,” said a 30-year-old Hispanic woman in Georgia who also voted for Harris. “So yeah, it’s probably not safe.”
A few of the women who voted for Trump said they were similarly concerned about the pill’s potential side effects.
“I’ve never taken birth control, but I’ve always heard that birth control wasn’t the best thing for you,” said a 30-year-old Black woman in Nevada who voted for Trump. “I know a lot of people who took it so they could have a regular period and stuff, but I’ve always heard that it’s been bad. So that’s why I went the route of getting my tubes tied instead.”
The focus groups shed light on both potential risks and opportunities for Democrats in 2026.
Omero said that while young women voters’ frustration with the economy and Trump’s war with Iran makes them persuadable, their negative views toward Republicans and Trump’s record aren’t necessarily enough to persuade them to vote for Democrats. Those women are looking less for a set of specific policies, she said, and more for candidates who they feel care about and understand them.
“You need to understand and have compassion and empathy for folks who are going through all kinds of different things, and that’s something that every candidate needs, no matter what they’re running for, to be able to do,” she added. “And they’re just not getting that from Trump. They’re not feeling it from Trump, even folks who voted for Trump don’t seem to be feeling it from Trump.”
The women in the second focus group also said they believe political figures on both sides of the aisle, including women, are out of touch with the lives of everyday working people. Even women who voted for Trump said they didn’t think Trump, First Lady Melania Trump or Vice President JD Vance truly understand what it’s like to be a young woman in the United States.
“I don’t think he really gets it because he doesn’t have that experience of being a woman in this day and age, and I feel like you need to go through the experience to really be able to understand and have empathy toward it,” a 24-year-old White woman in Michigan who voted for Trump said of Vance.
The women in that group were largely unfamiliar with, or had no opinion on, other prominent conservative women, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, and Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk. The women didn’t see many Democrats doing much better, though a couple of participants named Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as politicians who understand the average American.
“I don’t think I could name a single person, really, in the White House or in politics today that would understand not only a woman in today’s day and age, but just the average American overall,” said a 26-year-old White woman from Michigan who did not vote in 2024.
“I think it’s very hard to listen to somebody on TV say that they understand what we’re going through when they make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and live off our taxes,” she added.