‘The Best I Can Do Is Cancel Out His Vote’
In this last week before Election Day, several ads have appeared showing the same scenario: a woman heads to the polls, encouraged by her husband. He thinks she’ll vote for Donald Trump, like him, but she privately casts a ballot for Vice-President Kamala Harris. The message? No one has to know who you vote for. In an election where the gender divide among voters has never been starker, Democrats are hoping that women — even those who may see themselves as conservative or who have Republican partners — will help them clinch the White House. Women support Harris over Trump by 16 points, according to the most recent New York Times/Siena poll, while Trump has a 14-point lead over Harris with men. Those women who are in politically divided marriages aren’t necessarily hiding their support for Harris from their husbands, however. We spoke with four women who plan to vote for the Democrat about how their partners gravitated to Trump, how the couples navigate their opposing political views, and whether getting a divorce is on the table.
“He confronted me about my mail-in ballot.”
I came from a family that was very, very left. They were those hippies, you know? When I was younger, I voted for the Green Party and was interested in issues like the environment and education. I haven’t changed a whole lot as I’ve gotten older. When we met, I thought my husband was more or less left leaning. We both voted for Obama, and politics wasn’t a big topic of conversation.
But that shifted over the years. He started working for a company in a smaller town, and everyone there is very conservative. After we had kids, he started working feverishly. It was probably due to anxiety about being a dad, wanting to be a provider, not wanting to lose his job. We met during the recession, and he was scarred by that. It concerned him a lot that if he lost his job, he wouldn’t be able to take care of our kids. The more he worked, the more depressed he became. That’s when he started listening to these right-wing podcasts on his hourlong commute to work and then back again. When he got home, he’d start watching them on YouTube.
As soon as Trump came onto the scene, for some reason, he thought he was hilarious and awesome. I thought Trump was a joke. I don’t hate Republicans, and I even agree with some things they say, but I cannot for the life of me understand why they would pick this person. My husband voted for Trump in 2016 and again the next time. This year, he’s been getting more and more angry when people talk about restricting guns, or DEI efforts, or when he sees videos about trans people. He feels everything is being changed to accommodate this small group of people. He’ll yell back at the TV sometimes, or he starts talking to me, and he’s just repeating what he’s heard on these podcasts. I say, “I get it, but you don’t need to get louder about it.”
Then the ballots for this election came. I took mine, got in the car, did my voting, and dropped it off at the ballot box. I wanted it to be over with, and I didn’t want to feel pressured to change how I vote. He confronted me about it one night this week. He got angry and started telling me all the reasons Kamala Harris was awful. I was like, “I don’t want to argue about it. I don’t wanna sit here and listen to the same thing I have to listen to on the TV all the time.” In the heat of the moment, I was like, What am I doing? Is this crazy? I’m not confrontational and I don’t tend to put my own ideas forward if I feel like there’s going to be conflict. I’m very sensitive to yelling, and he did that. I can’t help but think he is really stressed out with this job right now, and that, mixed up with the whole Trump situation, is making him jumpy.
Some people are like, “Oh, if your partner votes Republican, you should leave them. If anyone in your family votes Republican, you should cut them out forever.” I have a really small family. I would have no one if I cut out everybody who disagreed with me. My family of origin was super left leaning and also extremely verbally and physically abusive. Whereas my husband’s family, who are very conservative, have always been so warm and kind. I believe that you can not only coexist, but have a really warm relationship with people when you’re not agreeing at all.
I’ve decided I’m gonna wait and see how he reacts after all the madness is over. I can’t make a clearheaded decision because my heart is too involved. I’ve started counting good days and bad days, and when I get to a certain point where it’s more bad days than good days, that’s when I’ll make a big decision. I’m hoping that it doesn’t get to that point and that we can talk about it when things calm down. If he won’t go into therapy with me, I’m hoping that I can go by myself and get some tools. I definitely need to work on my own boundaries. At the heart of it, we both do love each other very much. He would be devastated if he couldn’t be with his kids every day, and my kids and I would be, too. —Jennifer, 53, Oregon, married for 20 years
“If I could leave him, I would.”
I was raised in a Republican, Christian household. I was taught to be a good girl who listens to the pastor, that liberals and Democrats were evil like the devil. After I moved out of the house, it was a slow evolution for me. What really brought me over to the Democrat side is the Black Lives Matter movement, around 2013. I could not understand why the Republican people around me didn’t identify with this movement and say, “This is wrong.” As soon as I realized that those people are probably very racist, I was like, “I can’t be a part of this anymore.”
My husband and I have been together for five-and-a-half years. When we first got together, he was more supportive of my views, and he would go out of his way to cook for me and clean up. He looked like an all-around great guy, and as soon as I was trapped in the relationship, all that good behavior just ended.
I found out he was going to vote for Trump after I gave birth in October 2020. He always told me before that he didn’t really care about politics. He was kind of anti-government, but I guess Trump appeals to that sort of person. He does tell me that he doesn’t agree with Trump on everything and thinks he’s an asshole sometimes, but he agrees with him on the economy and that there should be less red tape.
I thought he was a good, loving person, and knowing that he is willing to support Trump — whom I view as a monster — felt like a huge betrayal to me. He knows where I stand on women’s rights and how important that is to me. We have a daughter together, and Trump has stripped rights from me and my daughter. I had a miscarriage recently, and I could not get the care that I needed. I called my doctor, and they did not want to see me in the office. They told me if I felt like I needed to, I should go to the ER. I was at home by myself with my 3-year-old daughter and I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t drive myself — I’d been bleeding all day long, barely able to stand. By the time my husband finally came home around 11 p.m., he took me there. The fact that he doesn’t seem to care about that is heartbreaking, and I struggle with it every day.
He used to bring things up to me about politics, and I would sit there and listen. He would love to argue and bring up his right-wing news stations. But this year, I started speaking up. I’ll say things like, “The fact that you support him for the economy is wrong, because renowned economists have come out and said that Kamala Harris’s plan would actually be better.” I fact-check everything that he says and I bring back different points that he hasn’t read before. I push back every single time, and I think he is getting tired of it. What is interesting is that when I became more outspoken, he started doing more chores. He will do the dishes now. I believe I have gotten him from being a definite Trump voter to a probable non-voter. To me, if he doesn’t vote, that’s a win.
People who believe they’re being supportive say, “Leave your relationship. Divorce him.” But that is not helpful. I totally get why some people feel it is a massive deal-breaker. However, not everybody can instantly leave a relationship. If I could have moved in with my mom, I would have, but my mom lives in a tiny home. My dad is even more of a hard-core Trump supporter, so I never wanna live with him. Every time I see a comment like that, my stomach gets a knot. If I could leave him, I would. But you need two workers to raise a family. I am in this. I have the option to stay and try to change his mind, or I can leave and potentially be homeless with my children. So I’m gonna stick it out and try to get him to come around. —Jessica, 35, Texas, common-law married for five years
“I’m not going to divorce him because he’s voting red.”
We’re not die-hard political people. My husband is not rolling around with a MAGA hat and a Trump shirt on. A lot of people in Tennessee are, but that is not my husband. He’s not extreme. When I voted for Joe Biden in 2020, he was like, “Oh my God, what are you doing?” And I was like, “This is how I freaking feel, and I’m gonna do it!” He looks at it from a fiscal point of view, and I look at it from a reproductive rights point of view. I keep telling my husband that we have a daughter and I’m going to vote for our rights. We’re finished having children, but if I got pregnant and had a medical emergency, I would not be able to receive medical care in my state.
My husband would fight to the death to keep us alive and healthy. But his mind-set for so long has been fiscally conservative around tax laws and all the things that affect us as a provider for our family. That’s what is important to him — not gun control, for example. He is pro-choice, but it’s so much bigger than just one thing for him.
We joke, “We’re gonna cancel each other’s vote out,” but we’re still gonna vote. I had seen other people’s TikTok content, and one of them had used a song like, “Me on my way to cancel out my dad’s vote!” So I posted something like, “Yeah, I’m canceling out my husband’s vote.”
Twenty minutes later, it had 50,000 views. If you scroll through the comments section, it’s freaking insane. People are like, “Divorce him!” It’s bizarre to me. I’ve seen a lot of people saying, “I’m canceling out my dad’s vote” or “I’m canceling out my mom’s vote,” so it’s not just about marriage. There were comments like, “Oh my God, this is us,” where they tagged their husband. Someone was like, “I pray this kind of love never finds me,” and that’s sad. We have a wonderful relationship other than that we differ in politics. Plenty of people have differing points of view, but it doesn’t mean that they can’t love each other. At the end of the day, if you’re gonna let something like this cause a rift in your marriage, then maybe you have some bigger problems, right? There’s something else going on if this is the tipping point for your relationship.
Being a liberal in the South is hard. It’s not like being in a major metropolitan area where everyone believes what you believe. But to break free from the mold is great. We’ve got friends and family members who cancel out each other’s votes. In our circle of friends, they all know how I lean, but they’re not not friends with me because of my political beliefs. It’s the same way with my husband. He is not gonna divorce me because I’m voting blue, and I’m not going to divorce him because he’s voting red. I tell him I need him to understand what’s at stake for me, our daughter, and the future of America. I’ll try every day until November 5 to change his mind, but I also know that he’s a stubborn man. The best I can do is cancel out his vote. —Noli, 36, Tennessee, married for eight years
“He had a red hat; I threw it away.”
We were on the same page at the beginning. We were Republicans, and then in 2008, I voted for Obama. It was no big deal; he didn’t really even care. I really liked John McCain, so I was torn. But at the end of the day, I wanted to vote for this young Black president. I felt like South Carolina was gonna go red no matter what, and I couldn’t live with myself if I hadn’t done the right thing. I thought of myself as a Republican or independent, but I would occasionally vote for Democrats locally. My daughter is the one that said, “I think you’re a Democrat, mom.” When Hillary Clinton ran against Trump, we both hated him. I’m a school librarian, and I felt Trump is not a role model. I would never want students to look up to this person. I didn’t feel like he even liked the American people. My husband voted for Gary Johnson.
But by the time Trump ran in 2020, he was all in. He had a red hat; I threw it away. I don’t understand why he started to like Trump so much between 2016 and 2020. It seemed like he just started to really hate the Democrats. A lot of that, in my opinion, came from Fox News. He also has lots of friends, and they all send rude memes about Democrats. In 2020, in the evening, on the way home, one of us would pick a fight. It was ridiculous. I said, “We can’t talk about it.” He agreed.
He’s been a little quieter this race, especially after Biden dropped out. Before he would make fun of Biden a lot, send me little memes. I would just send back, “I’m still gonna vote for him. He didn’t try to overthrow the government. He didn’t try to grab me by a private part.” He’s also said, “Of course, I’m pro-choice, but that’s not what I’m voting on.” I don’t just vote for me; I think about my future daughter-in-law, my own daughter, my nieces. If you ask him, he’ll just say, “The economy.” I don’t think that makes him a cruel or bad person, just a person who is thinking about their small business, their bank account. Even though I don’t think he’s correct, he is coming from a place of what he thinks will affect him.
I didn’t keep my end of the agreement and I started a fight last night, off the cuff. I said, “Give me a policy. Give me one thing about the economy. Explain to me like I’m dumb how things are gonna get better.” He got mad at me, but then today we’re fine. He’s done it to me, too. Every once in a while, one of us will do a little jab. But I try to stay away, because I don’t wanna rock the boat, and I also appreciate him not rocking the boat. I can’t put up signs and neither can he. I have some Harris-Walz T-shirts that I wear when I’m not with him, to be respectful. We can’t talk about politics, but I think it’s for the best, because we are happily married.
My son is engaged to be married, and sadly, my husband has turned him into a Republican. That’s the thing that makes me most irritated — my son didn’t even seem to care about politics before. He is marrying a girl who is a Democrat. I have thought to myself, Well, I don’t know that I’d do that now. They seem very happy, but she’s said it worries her. I said, “It would worry me too. You need to make sure that he’s gonna be respectful, and you need to be respectful of him.”
The one thing some people don’t understand about people growing up in the South is that to be a Republican is just a way of life. My family was Republican, my husband’s too. I don’t even think we talked about politics, it was just so ingrained. Right after the 2020 election, I was on a Facebook group for “wives of deplorables.” There were lots of women getting divorced and saying, “I couldn’t take it!” I think to myself, I am lucky that he’s not in my face about it every day. It would be hard if you have a person who didn’t respect you enough to be quiet about it, like if I had to come home every day to Fox News blaring, and they’re in your face like, “You’re dumb.” If they don’t respect you enough to say, “I don’t agree with your vote, but we’re gonna agree not to talk about it,” then they don’t respect you as a person anyway. —Amy, 56, South Carolina, married for 30 years