The nice woman sitting on her porch one afternoon seemed curious to see what Kristin Fulwylie had to say about a Senate candidate and other Democrats on her North Carolina ballot. She graciously accepted a leaflet introducing the party's slate of candidates, from Vice President Kamala Harris on down.

Afterward, Fulwylie strolled down the street to continue knocking on doors in Cabarrus County, outside of Charlotte. As she returned to her car, a man Fulwylie believed to be the woman's husband confronted her, campaign documents in hand.

“You can have this back. We’re not supporting any of these candidates,” Fulwylie recalled the man telling her. The woman on the porch no longer made eye contact with her, she said.

“I’m not sure how she plans to vote,” said Fulwylie, executive director of D4 Women in Action, the political arm of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. “He made it very clear that they were doing the exact opposite of what she had originally told me.”

As for the woman, Fulwylie said, “She didn’t say anything.”

Even as one of their own women vie to become the first female president, with abortion rights high on the list of campaign issues, some women still look to their husbands and other trusted men, even after more than a century of suffrage, before casting their vote, campaign activists and researchers told The Fuller Project.

A minority of them are intimidated by overbearing men, but more women simply lack confidence in their own political acumen and turn to the men in their lives for advice, they said.

“Women are heavily influenced by the men in their lives around the election. They don’t want problems or tension in their relationship,” said Democratic strategist Jill Alper. Noting that women are often overburdened by the combination of paid work and a disproportionate share of family responsibilities, she added: “They give more credence to what a man thinks because they think he has more time for that Research.”

The phenomenon is not new, but it could make the difference in what is expected to be an unusually close presidential race. And because polls predict a potentially record-breaking gender gap — with the majority of women voting for Harris and most men supporting former President Donald Trump — the possibility that even a small number of women will vote like their husbands is turning Harris supporters nervous.

They have reason to be, according to a women's survey conducted for the Women & Politics Institute at American University and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation. Fifteen percent of respondents who live with a partner told pollsters that they “regularly” or “sometimes” feel pressured to choose like their partners.

“And about half of women in serious relationships reported living in a 'mixed household' in terms of political ideology, meaning there were sometimes disagreements over issues,” said Amanda Hunter, the foundation's former executive director .

Making matters worse, it's easier for partners to keep tabs on each other's decisions when voting by mail from home — a habit that became increasingly common before and especially during the pandemic.

The problem has worsened this year because Trump is running a testosterone-fueled campaign full of openly sexist and misogynistic insults designed to shore up his support among men, said Christina Reynolds, a spokeswoman for EMILY's List, which works to elect pro-choice Democratic women sets in.

“It’s the way Trump talks,” Reynolds said. “I think this potentially creates a permissions structure.”

As evidence, she pointed to comments from Fox News host Jesse Watters, who said that if his wife voted for Harris it would be tantamount to an affair.

To combat the threat of female exodus, Harris supporters are using tactics ranging from clever television ads to handwritten Post-it notes to remind women that their voices are private. No lesser personalities than former first lady Michelle Obama, former Republican representative Liz Cheney and actress Julia Roberts delivered the message.

The Lincoln Project, founded by anti-Trump Republicans, aired an ad encouraging women to vote for Harris even if their husbands expect them to support Trump. The vice president's campaign is losing men's votes “because of the frat language that Donald Trump uses,” said Ryan Wiggins, chief of staff at the Lincoln Project. “He talks to them like they're in locker rooms.” Women, on the other hand, are often repulsed by Trump's behavior, she said.

“When we made this ad, we wanted to remind women that you don't have to vote with your man, especially when he's screwing that whole bro culture,” Wiggins said. “He’ll never know how.” You voted. You can lie to him. … He’s not in this cabin with you.”

In an emotional address in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Obama urged men to take seriously the threat that a Trump presidency would pose to women's lives and health through increasing abortion bans since then Roe v. Wade was knocked over.

She also offered advice to women.

“If you are a woman living in a household with men who don't listen to you or value your opinions, remember that your voice is a private matter,” Obama said at the rally in Michigan in late October. “You can use your judgment and use your voice for yourself and the women in your life. Remember that women who fight for what is best for us can make a difference in this election.”

The overarching theme of the ads, speeches and sticky notes is clear: choose your conscience.

At the same time, the admonitions have raised questions about what is really going on in America.

Cindy Hohman, chair of the Hendrick County Democrats in Indiana, thinks she knows. When they knocked on doors, Democratic activists in her Indianapolis suburb always asked by name for women who voted in the party's primaries, she said. She said they stopped the practice in 2018 after three women ended up in shelters.

“What happened was we asked for a woman, if we had her on our voter list as a Democrat, and her husband answered the door and we said, 'Hello, is Hannah home?' or whoever? And he would say, 'No, who are you?'”

When the canvassers identified themselves, some husbands responded with something similar: “If she votes Democrat, I'll kick her ass,” Hohman recalls.

According to political experts, it is more common for women to volunteer to follow their husbands' recommendations, not so much to avoid physical assault (although there are no statistics on policy-related intimate partner violence), but to avoid verbal confrontations.

Sometimes, they said, it's just easier to take a man's political advice than argue about it.

Jackie Payne, founder and executive director of Galvanize Action, has extensive experience with women seeking political advice from their male partners, bosses, friends and family. The 49 million moderate white women her nonpartisan organization studies are generally civic-minded and vote in large numbers, but are often ill-informed and exposed to influence, she said.

“They tell us that they really don't like politics all that much, that they avoid the news that they perceive as increasingly negative, and that they end up feeling like the men in their lives know more about politics than they do,” said Payne. “So that can quite rationally lead to relying on these men, these men they trust, for their opinion about who they should vote for, even if that means issues that are very important to these women are not have priority.”

These women, she said, would subordinate their interests to keep the peace. This year, women are far more concerned about restoring abortion rights than men, Payne said.

In a September survey of more than 8,000 moderate white women that Galvanize Action has been tracking for months, nearly a third (31 percent) said they strongly agreed with this statement: “I would only vote for a presidential candidate, the measures “Protect abortion for everyone.” Another 17 percent said they “somewhat” agreed.

That seems to bode well for Harris, a staunch and vocal supporter of abortion rights. In fact, her campaign and that of Democrats across the country are ensuring voters remember that it was Trump's three Supreme Court nominees that enabled the court's downfall roe. (Trump has also championed his role in bringing abortion back to the states, falsely claiming that “everyone” wanted it.)

But not all women who care about abortion want to risk their relationships fighting for it, Payne said.

“I've often had women ask me, 'Do I have to get a divorce because of this?'” she said.

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake sees the same trend in surveys and focus groups.

“Women will say things like, 'You should talk to my husband.' He knows more about politics than I do.' Or, 'He's really following this, I'm not.' Or, 'I'm listening to him about who to vote for,'” Lake said. “And of course the men also assume their superior knowledge. So it’s not just a problem of performance management, but rather a problem of presumed expertise.”

She noted that a certain group of women are confident in their own expertise.

“College-educated women try to intimidate their husbands into voting the way they want,” Lake said. She added that for the first time, Republicans are working to prevent college-educated men, who tend to base their votes on economic issues and favor Trump, from being influenced by their wives.

This article was created in collaboration with The Fuller Projecta nonprofit journalism organization that reports on global issues affecting women.

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