Trump's silent husbands vs Harris's secret wives

It could have all boiled down to people walking into the room, their hearts skipping a beat as they mentally removed their wedding rings before casting their votes. Because just like in Vegas, what happens at the voting centre, stays at the voting centre. Otherwise faithful, millions of spouses must have cheated on their partners on voting day. This even as Donald Trump is all set to be the 47th President of the US, winning the 2024 presidential election convincingly.

While most opinion polls showed a neck-and-neck fight with Democrat Kamala Harris, the Trump campaign seemed unusually enthused as the election approached. The reason? They were confident about the huge chunk of silent pro-Trump voters who make a big statement on voting day. They also nullified the Democratic campaign asking women from conservative households to secretly vote for Harris.

TRUMP CAMPAIGN CONFIDENT OF SILENT MALE VOTERS

Electoral infidelity was the talk of the town this election season.

"If I found out my wife secretly voted for Harris, that's the same thing as having an affair. That violates the sanctity of our marriage. That would be D-Day," political commentator Jesse Watters said during a panel discussion on Fox News.

That was a possibility.

Though adult franchise is all about expressing individual choice, women from conservative American households are expected to vote for the Republican Party like the menfolk.

The Harris campaign even released an ad featuring Pretty Woman actor Julia Roberts to encourage women to vote for Kamala Harris and keep it a secret from their husbands.

The ad shows two women secretly voting for Harris, exchanging glances, and going on to reassure their husbands that they picked the "right candidate".

"Remember, what happens in the booth, stays in the booth," the voice of Julia Roberts assures.

HOW KAMALA HARRIS TRIED TO WOO 'SECRET WIVES'

Women did vote differently from their partners, and kept it a secret.

Around 12% of the women surveyed by YouGuv said they secretly voted differently than their partners, The Washington Post reported. Nine per cent of men also admitted to have secretly voted differently from their spouses.

Forty per cent of women surveyed believed their partners were planning to vote for Trump, while 38% planned to pick Harris, said the Washington Post report. "Among men, 46% believed their spouses planned to vote for Trump, compared with 40% who planned to vote for Harris."

The Wall Street Journal questioned the ad in an opinion piece headlined 'Kamala Harris’s Secret Wives'.

The opinion piece by Collin Levy called it "one of the weirdest pitches of the 2024 election", and asked why the Harris campaign was "insulting the intelligence of the women it’s trying to attract?"

The gender subtext of the ad was clear. It also hinted at the battle of the sexes that have come to dominate the 2024 US presidential election.

That the men are for Trump, is what the Harris campaign ad unintentionally conveyed. This is the truth, according to multiple surveys, and most of them are silent voters.

A survey by the New York Times and Sienna college found that women have maintained their years-long support base for Democrats and men for Trump. Trump had an 11-percentage-point advantage with male voters.

"Trump is betting that he can harness all of this to motivate a wave of young men to vote on Election Day," said the New York Times.

Women voters did lean towards Kamala Harris, but her edge among them didn't go beyond what Joe Biden saw in 2020 or Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to a CNN exit poll.

The CNN poll, which was still dynamic due to the addition of data, showed Harris winning women by 8 points, while it was 15 and 13 points in case of Biden and Clinton, respectively.

Trump, however, was a hit among young voters, both men and women, and his appeal cut across race this time. Latino men embraced him.

Most of them were silent all the while.

WHY PRO-TRUMPERS DID NOT COME OUT OF THE CLOSET

And there is a reason why a huge section of Trump voters are a silent lot.

The maverick Republican has mostly received bad press. The caricature of Trump and his voters has not been generous.

President Joe Biden, in a gaffe, revealed what he and Democrats consider Trump voters to be - "garbage".

It is the judgemental frown most Trump voters want to avoid, and therefore stop from coming out before friends, colleagues and pollsters.

"If you had conservative friends (of which I have many) and you were someone they didn't fear judgement from, they would usually quietly say tell you they were voting for him [Trump] over Clinton. To me at least, this seems to represent the classic 'silent' Trump supporters," said a Reddit user.

It was the silent voters who gifted Trump the presidency in 2016 and made the Democrats underestimate the size of his support base in 2020.

SILENT HUSBANDS ARE OUT AND ABOUT NOW AFTER TRUMP WIN

More and more Trump voters are coming out now.

“The social stigma is coming off because he’s very well known in the public, and he hasn’t changed,” political consultant Jimmy Keady told the Washington Examiner.

Though shying away from being called a Trump voter is on its way out, it is still a fact that most of his voters remain just that, silent voters. What could be bigger evidence than how multiple opinion polls have time and again failed to gauge Trump's approval ratings.

Trump's secret voters behaved exactly like secret lovers. Acting in complete silence.

"Secret Trump-voting husband driving home from early voting as his Harris-voting teacher wife is awash in blissful ignorance," said a post on X with an image from the iconic movie, The Shining.

In the end, Trump has created history by becoming the first US President in 132 years to be re-elected after being kept away from the Oval Office. It is because the men helped him counter the secret wives of Kamala Harris, in absolute silence, at times hiding it from their spouses.