MEMORANDUM
To: Interested Parties
From: Mary Alice Carter, Executive Director, Equity Forward
Date: Thursday, November 8, 2018
Re: Election 2018: Women voters turned out, holding elected officials responsible for child separation
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As the dust continues to settle from the historic 2018 election, one key takeaway is clear: women had an outsized role in electing the new Congress, voting for Democrats by a 19 point margin. Their turnout made the difference in key races in suburban areas where Democrats picked up the majority of their seats.
Moreover, voters — and women in particular, as is evident by their record turnout — want Congress to conduct oversight and hold the Trump administration accountable. Specifically, voters want Congress to hold the administration accountable for the family separation crisis.
The Power of the Female Electorate
2018 saw historic voter turnout. Specifically, women dominated the polls, accounting for 52 percent of voters in preliminary results, matching their previous high from 2010.
With so many Republicans — like Leonard Lance (NJ-7), Carlos Curbelo (FL-26), and Pete Sessions (TX-32) — losing their seats this year, it’s clear that women made the difference at the ballot box in this election. And in all of these key races where a Republican lost their seat to a Democrat, the incumbent’s inaction on child separation was a key issue.
Voters Expect Congress to Investigate Child Separation
A top issue weighing on the minds of voters was immigration, including the inhumane “zero tolerance” policy that ripped children from their parents and may result in kids being permanently orphaned.
A recent nationwide poll conducted by Restore Public Trust confirms this; in fact, in that poll, conducted by Global Strategy Group and GBA Strategies, 82 percent of respondents agreed that Congress should be responsible for conducting oversight of senior officials in the presidential administration, and only 27 percent approved of the job Congress was doing to conduct oversight of the Trump administration.
This summer Equity Forward also conducted two rounds of extensive polling on the child separation crisis in a cross section of House districts in California, Florida, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. When asked to describe the “zero tolerance” policy in one word, voters of all stripes and political parties overwhelmingly characterized it as “inhumane.”
GRAPHIC FROM JUNE 2018 POLL IN TX-7 CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
The polls also found that voters — including a significant number of Republicans and Trump supporters — strongly support Congressional action to stop family separation and to increase the accountability and transparency of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), the office within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) tasked with overseeing the housing and wellbeing of the thousands of children separated from their parents. Specifically, in NJ-7 and FL-26 more than 70% of likely constituent voters were concerned with the policy and there is broad agreement that the policy is inhumane.
These same polls demonstrated that constituents wanted to see their member of Congress hold HHS accountable for its role in the family separation crisis. In short, the constituents of Lance, Curbelo, and Sessions wanted their elected leaders to hold the administration accountable, and their failure to do so is likely a contributing factor to their losses.
The New Congress Can’t Ignore Child Separation
It’s clear that conducting oversight of HHS and the child separation issue isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s a political necessity that the new Congress must handle. While the child separation policy was implemented nearly half a year ago, the American people still lack a detailed understanding of the policy, of the administrative failures that created the crisis, and most importantly, that hundreds of children who were separated from their families are still being detained by our government.
The election results were clear: it’s vital that Congress conduct meaningful oversight of the child separation crisis, with specific regard to the role HHS played in implementing the policy and its role in the care and housing of the children in ORR custody.
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