Wendy Davis was the canary in the coal mine. Poll after poll showed she had virtually no chance of winning the Texas gubernatorial race even though the Planned Parenthood abortion business went out of its way to pump up her campaign.
That Davis would lose by a landslide was a predictor of things to come for the pro-life movement in last night’s landslide victory. But Davis’ loss is worse than top abortion backers will probably care to admit. She lost women voters.
Wendy Davis lost her bid for Texas governor as soon as the polls closed Tuesday night (actually before that, but this made it official), and one of the most interesting pieces of information from the early exit polls was that she didn’t even win the women vote.
Davis, who rose to fame after an 11-hour filibuster of a bill that would ban abortions beyond 20 weeks (five months), was supposed to be the perfect “war on women” candidate for Democrats. But Texas women chose otherwise.
Davis’ opponent, governor-elect Greg Abbott, won women by (at the time of this writing) 9 points, according to CNN exit polls. Davis only won unmarried women by 14 points, while Abbott won married women by 25 points.
Those aren’t good numbers for a candidate that was supposed to encompass what the Left thinks women care about.
Writing at the Federalist, pro-life writer Mollie Hemingway sums up Davis’ failure and that of the “war on women” claims.
No one better encapsulates the Democratic playbook than Wendy Davis, who ran for governor of Texas.
Her campaign was launched in vintage War on Women style. By filibustering a popular late-term abortion ban in Texas, she immediately gained the support of many in the mainstream media. They feted her with free in-kind advertising in the form of puffy profile pieces, cover stories, and other effusive coverage.
Sarah Kliff, who famously dismissed the Kermit Gosnell story as nothing more than “local crime” and therefore unworthy of coverage, covered Davis extensively while at the Washington Post and later when she moved to Vox.
In between these stories were who knows how many articles and video packages claiming that Texas might turn purple, that Wendy Davis would be a formidable candidate, that the War on Women was a weakness … for Republicans.
Planned Parenthood treated Mark Udall and Wendy Davis as their most important races, knocking on a million doors and making two million phone calls, they claimed, to drive votes to them.
While Davis went down in defeat, pro-life women experienced massive gains.
As Marjorie Dannenfelser of SBA List told LifeNews, “Last night’s overwhelming victory for pro-life candidates showed the abortion-centered ‘war on women’ strategy has completely failed.”
“SBA List added a third pro-life woman to the Senate with Joni Ernst’s victory in Iowa. We strengthened pro-life women’s leadership in the House, electing women like Mia Love (UT-04) and Elise Stefanik (NY-21). Mia, the first black Republican congresswoman and Elise, the youngest woman ever elected to the House are both pro-life. Where is this so-called ‘war on women’?” she asked.
