Women Voters 2026: Priorities and Candidate Messaging

Objective and Context

Claude commissioned qualitative research to understand what issues matter most to women voters in 2026, how they respond to women candidate messaging, and what makes them trust or distrust candidates. Across 18 responses, participants consistently prioritized everyday, measurable delivery over slogans or identity-first appeals.

Cross-Question Learnings (Grounded in Evidence)

Issues that move votes are cost-of-living relief, schools, healthcare (including maternal and mental health), housing affordability, infrastructure (transit, roads, broadband, grid), and accountable public safety. Respondents want specific, funded plans with timelines and milestones. As Destiny Welch put it, “checkpoints, not poetry”-a one-page plan with who pays and 90/180/365-day targets. Roxana Bogan echoed, “Receipts, not vibes,” and asked for plain-English budgets plus donor and meeting disclosures. Local, unscripted presence matters: Bethany Engel values town halls in “church basements” and VFWs, not staged ribbon cuttings.

Public safety is a shared priority with split emphases: Bethany wants “law and order with accountability” (body cams, clear rules), while Mark Leiseth stresses firm enforcement and Second Amendment rights. On climate/energy, voters favor reliability and resilience-Larissa Vega calls for shaded transit stops, safe bike links, and cutting corridor diesel pollution; Mark backs affordable power, including natural gas and nuclear. Immigration and renter stability surface through a practical lens-Adam Carrillo asks for bilingual, plain-English navigation and skepticism toward “predictive policing toys and data-broker nonsense.” Integrity signals include admitting mistakes (Mark: “what you got wrong…what you changed”), staff culture (“pay interns,” per Adam), and transparency (Roxana: “If you hide the ball, I assume there’s a ball.”)

Women Candidates: What Helps and Hurts

Gender is not decisive; it can be a tie-breaker only after competence and community delivery are established. Bethany: “her being a woman doesn’t win my vote, and it doesn’t lose it either.” Voters reject performative “as a woman” rhetoric or man-bashing. What earns support: receipts on childcare, schools, maternal health, clean water, and safety; steady, respectful leadership; local engagement (bilingual outreach, schools, faith communities); and ethical fundraising. Larissa warns against pandering-“October-only” Spanish and taco photo-ops are “cringe.”

Persona Correlations and Nuances

• Older rural evangelical women (Bethany): Moral steadiness, unequivocal denunciation of violence, unscripted local presence, and costed family supports.
• Suburban college-educated parents (Roxana): Childcare affordability, maternal/postpartum care, school quality, kids’ digital safety, and full financial transparency.
• Younger rural care/education workers (Destiny): Bus driver shortages, para pay, rural broadband, clinic hours-want one-page plans with dates and owners.
• Hispanic/Latina urban-edge professionals (Larissa): Heat/water resilience, transit/air quality, non-tokenized bilingual access.
• Urban immigrant-adjacent volunteers (Adam): Bilingual navigation, renter protections, privacy safeguards, published timelines.
• Rural trades/manufacturing (Mark): Energy reliability, apprenticeships, border/enforcement; respect for blue-collar experience.

Recommendations

• Ship “Receipts, not vibes” one-pagers for top issues (childcare, schools, healthcare, housing, safety, infrastructure) with costs, who pays, and 90/180/365 milestones (Destiny, Roxana).
• Stand up a transparency microsite for donors, meetings, conflicts, and staff pay bands (Roxana) with regular updates.
• Institutionalize unscripted local engagement: two Q&A events per district per month in schools, churches, VFWs (Bethany), with follow-up memos.
• Deliver bilingual access (EN/ES) year-round, not seasonal, with native-speaker QA to avoid tokenism (Larissa, Adam).
• Bridge safety with accountability via a message matrix pairing enforcement and prevention (Bethany, Mark), including body cams, DV prevention, and co-response pilots.

Risks and Measurement Guardrails

• Polarization on safety/guns/immigration: use balanced language, local validators, publish trade-offs (Bethany, Mark).
• Tokenized bilingual output: avoid “October-only” Spanish (Larissa); schedule and translate consistently (Adam).
• Overpromising beyond control: frame as pilots with constraints and checkpoints; admit misses (Mark).

• KPIs: Receipts compliance rate (≥95% pages with costs/payer/timeline/owner); Bilingual coverage (100% priority assets/events); Unscripted engagement cadence (≥2 events/district/month, ≥60 minutes Q&A); 48-hour response SLA (≥90%); Transparency freshness (≤7 days since update).

Immediate Next Steps

1. Q1 (next 6–10 weeks): Publish receipts one-pagers; launch transparency microsite MVP; roll out EN/ES style guide; schedule monthly unscripted town halls.
2. Q2: Pilot cost-of-living bundle; sign MoUs for school/care hiring; announce infrastructure reliability projects; launch 90/180/365 dashboard.
3. Q3: Scale successful pilots; publish 180-day progress; iterate messages using KPI readouts.
4. Q4: Localized success stories, weekly transparency updates, and steady unscripted cadence through Election Day.