HERSHEY, Pa. — Erika Jackson is sick of being told she “doesn’t look like a Trump supporter.”
“People definitely judge me more harshly,” said the 22-year-old recent graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia. “Isn’t the whole point that women can speak our own minds? Why is it only OK if it’s liberal, or if we support Hillary?”
If Donald Trump loses Tuesday, it will be in part because he’s losing college-educated, young white women by 27 points, a bloc that Mitt Romney won with 52 percent in 2012.
Yet there are young women who back Trump. And interviews with about two dozen this weekend revealed a range of reasons and resentment that they should be expected to vote one way because of their age and gender. They say the election has celebrated young women and political engagement, but only if “it’s supporting liberal policies and Hillary,” Jackson said.
“The legacy of having a woman president doesn’t need to be Hillary Clinton,” said Amanda Rider, an 19-year-old student from Harrisburg, Pa., interviewed at a Trump rally Friday in Hershey, Pa. “If I’m sexist because I don’t vote for you because you’re a woman, then fine, I’m sexist.”
Young women at Trump’s rally said it was unfair to feel social pressure just for voting their conscience.
Kaeleigh Green, a 21-year-old student from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, said the election should be about encouraging young women to educate themselves about issues that matter to them. “I agree with him on a lot of his tax policies, a lot of his border policies, and I think he’s the best candidate to lead the country right now,” she said.