Do men pressure their wives to vote like them in America?

The discussion about ads reminding women they can keep their vote for Harris a secret from their pro-Trump husbands or boyfriends has taken the internet by storm.

Aside from the effectiveness of the campaign or how ridiculous some internet users found the notion, it shows an underlying reality: some women live under constant coercion.

So, how common is the issue? Are thousands of women being pressured to vote like their husbands do? What they do at polls is secret, but what if they vote by mail?

The fact that some couples are divided between Harris and Biden is a fact, just by sheer statistics. The 2024 election has an exceptionally steep gender gap.

Issues like abortion, which is fundamental to women’s rights, are front and center. So, according to polls, women favor Harris by at least 14%, and men favor Trump by at least 12%.

The discussion is not new. A 2018 opinion piece by Rebecca Solnit in The Guardian discussed the concerning trend among conservative husbands years before this tight election.

In that article and a new one she wrote for the 2024 election, Solnit cited stories from door-to-door canvassers who visited the houses of registered Democrat women.

In some cases, canvassers said the men who opened the door for them told them that they had mistakenly targeted a Republican home, not knowing their partners were registered Democrats.

In other, more complex cases, volunteers encountered husbands who interrupted their conversations with their wives or stepped out and closed the door to push them away.

Few of them told more violent stories: men outright saying or even shouting that their wife already knew who to vote for because they told them who they needed to support.

They also told stories of women quickly reaching the door before they rang or knocked to tell them their spouses did not know their preference for Democratic candidates.

Aside from the political implications, voting intimidation is only another aspect of domestic violence. According to experts, intimate partner violence is growing in the US.

Many women are not intimidated to vote with their husbands but choose to. An Oregon State University study concluded that many do so because they depend on their husbands financially, which is a different form of systematic pressure.

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