At first glance, the latest Massachusetts poll by the Boston Globe looks like just another off-year survey from the uber-accurate Suffolk University Political Research Center. Sen. Ed Markey leading Rep. Seth Moulton and within the margin of error with Rep. Ayanna Pressley in a small sample of Democrats; voters skeptical of the Legislature and supporting tax-cutting ballot questions; majority disapproval of quack federal health czar RFK Jr.
Ho hum.
But dig into the crosstabs and things get more interesting. As Suffolk pollster David Paleologos notes, the percent of voters rating the US economy poor or fair has taken an unusually sharp jump since his last local survey in October 2024: “Public perception…has dropped off the table over the last year.”
And leading the freefall – women.
In last year’s poll 53% of women said the country was on the wrong track. Today it’s 82%. The percentage of women describing the economy as “poor” has nearly doubled to 50%, while men offering the same description have held steady at around 30%.
Which points to another survey finding that may turn out to be the single most important factor in the 2026 election here – the emergence of some of the largest gender gaps ever recorded.
The 82% of women who say we’re on the wrong track nationally? That’s 28% higher than men. Conversely, six in ten women see the state headed in the right direction, a 29-point gender gap with men.
For context, presidential election gender gaps since 1980 have ranged from four to twelve points. A Vox pre-election headline last fall termed a 16-point Kamala Harris edge over Donald Trump a “massive gender gap.”
But those margins are puny compared with what’s happening here. Does Markey deserve re-election? Women say yes by a 22% margin over men. How about Gov. Maura Healey? Fifty-nine percent of women say she does, while just 33% of men do, a 26% chasm.
And Trump’s numbers are the mother lode. Majorities of both men and women disapprove or strongly disapprove, but with women, it’s a super-duper majority, 79%, compared with 52% of men.
What could possibly have happened since October 2024 to cause such yawning gender gaps? Hint: it’s orange, obese, and so consistently, gratuitously demeaning to women and their commonly held – at least, around here – principles that it defines a whole new genre of radical misogyny.
From the war on abortion rights to the crusade against DEI programs that address discrimination against women to the endless stream of juvenile epithets flung at non-subservient female reporters (“ugly,” “stupid,” “piggy”), Trump makes his contempt for women clear. And if he ever falters, Vice Piggy J.D. Vance is standing by to promote his grotesque theories about “childless cat ladies.”
“It’s coming at us from all directions,” says Arline Isaacson, co-chair of the Massachusetts GLBTQ Political Caucus. “It’s like whack-a-mole.”
Would real progress on curbing the cost of living narrow those gender gaps? Perhaps, but Trump-loathing has multiple fuel sources; women are 23% more opposed to Trump deportation policies than men and 26% more opposed to the way ICE thugs are being deployed.
Between this catalog of female rejection and numbers among men that aren’t especially robust, it’s clear local Republicans face a choice in 2026: reject Trump and Trumpism’s pathological sexism and have a prayer of competing for the votes of women who may otherwise be open to conservative arguments about taxes and fiscal restraint.
Or, don’t.
And get whacked.
Like a mole.