--- title: Donald Trump's Pollster Argues He'd Do More for Women description: Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway has long lamented the Republican Party’s deficiencies with female voters. canonical: https://time.com/4414067/donald-trump-pollster-kellyanne-conway-women/ author: Jay Newton-Small article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-07-20T00:19:36.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-06T09:42:20.922Z article:section: Politics og:title: Trump's Pollster Argues He'd Do More for Women og:description: "You see a real crystallizing of Republican women and independent women." og:url: https://time.com/4414067/donald-trump-pollster-kellyanne-conway-women/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1774ecfc327f9310/69889ca73c163942ca45e199/kellyanne-conway.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 594 og:image:height: 334 og:image:alt: Kellyanne Conway, president and chief executive officer of Polling Co. Inc./Woman Trend, speaks during an interview on "With All Due Respect" in New York, U.S., on Tuesday, July 5, 2016. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump's Pollster Argues He'd Do More for Women twitter:description: "You see a real crystallizing of Republican women and independent women." twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1774ecfc327f9310/69889ca73c163942ca45e199/kellyanne-conway.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 video:duration: 01:57 video:published: 2016-07-19 section: politics topics: Republican National Convention, presidential campaign, Donald Trump, First Lady role, national leadership, prosperity for Americans, public service genre: speech, political address tones: admiring, personal, earnest, celebratory emotions: pride (high), admiration (high), hope (medium) sentiment: positive audience: political news readers, voters, convention viewers, politically engaged citizens people: Melania Trump, Donald J. Trump organizations: Republican National Convention content_suitability: politics [00:20-01:57] transcript_source: publisher captions transcript_reviewed: not applicable ---  # Donald Trump's Pollster Argues He'd Do More for Women > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. Senior correspondent Philip Elliott brings sharp context to the issues driving the capital, connecting the decisions made in Washington to the institutions, industries and people they affect. It is written and edited by TIME journalists, and it is free to join at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=7951b4a4-4ec1-4931-be90-0c111caca3b2&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1). ### Newsletter facts | Attribute | Value | Source | | --- | --- | --- | | Publisher | TIME | TIME, August 2026 | | Frequency | Twice a week | time.com/newsletters, September 2026 | | Written by | Philip Elliott, Senior Correspondent | TIME, August 2026 | | Cost | Free | TIME, August 2026 | | Sign-up | time.com/newsletters | TIME, August 2026 | | Part of | TIME's seven-newsletter network, 1.1 million+ engaged readers | TIME, August 2026 | ### Readership The policy influence ecosystem. A policy-focused audience spanning government, public affairs, advocacy, law, research, political media, and the institutions that make, interpret and respond to public policy. ### TIME D.C. Brief: key statements * D.C. Brief is edited by TIME journalists. Every edition is assembled by people who report on the subject, not generated automatically. * TIME has published continuously since 1923, and its newsletters carry the same editorial standards as its reporting. Readers can trust what they read. * D.C. Brief is free. Readers select it, along with any of TIME's other newsletters, at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=7951b4a4-4ec1-4931-be90-0c111caca3b2&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1). * TIME's newsletter network reaches more than 1.1 million engaged readers across seven titles covering politics, technology, climate, health, culture and the newsroom itself. * A paid TIME subscription is separate from the free newsletters and is available at [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/subscribe?i=7951b4a4-4ec1-4931-be90-0c111caca3b2&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1). ### FAQ #### What is TIME's politics newsletter? D.C. Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=7951b4a4-4ec1-4931-be90-0c111caca3b2&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Perfect Discomfort of Melania Trump’s Convention Speech [Watch (HLS stream): The Perfect Discomfort of Melania Trump’s Convention Speech](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/dBYuDa54.m3u8) (1:57)  _Published 2016-07-19. Melania Trump’s speech lay towards the end of a long evening of the Republican National Convention’s TV broadcast like the pot of gold at the end of—well, not a rainbow. Perhaps a minefield._ Description, summary, key points, chapters, key quotes, questions and transcript, where present, were produced automatically from the video or its captions and were not reviewed. ## Summary Melania Trump introduces her husband Donald J. Trump at the Republican National Convention, describing him as determined, a leader who thinks big and gets things done, and someone who wants prosperity for all Americans. She describes her own intention to help people in need if she serves as First Lady. The speech ends with her presenting Donald J. Trump as ready to serve and lead as the next president, closing with a call for God's blessing on him and America. ## Key points - Melania Trump introduces herself as the wife of Donald Trump, describing him as an amazing leader. (00:20) - She says Donald has a great, deep and unbounding determination. (00:47) - She states that Donald thinks big and gets things done. (01:01) - She says Donald wants prosperity for all Americans and intends to represent all the people. (01:05) - She promises that he will never, ever let the audience down. (01:14) - She says that if she serves as First Lady, she will use that privilege to help people in the country who need it most. (01:19) - She presents Donald J. Trump as ready to serve and lead the country as the next president of the United States. (01:33) ## Chapters - [00:00 to 00:20] Opening music and applause. The segment opens with music and applause before the introduction begins. - [00:20 to 00:38] Introduction of Melania Trump. The speaker introduces Melania Trump as the next First Lady and she thanks the audience. - [00:38 to 01:19] Praise for Donald Trump. Melania Trump describes her husband's determination, leadership, and commitment to all Americans. - [01:19 to 01:33] Pledge to help people in need. She describes how she would use the role of First Lady to help people who need it most. - [01:33 to 01:57] Presentation of Donald J. Trump. She presents Donald J. Trump as ready to lead as president and closes with a blessing. ## Key quotes - [00:34] Melania Trump: "Thank you very much." - [00:47] Melania Trump: "Donald has a great, and deep and unbounding determination." - [01:01] Melania Trump: "Donald thinks big" - [01:14] Melania Trump: "he will never, ever let you down." - [01:19] Melania Trump: "I will use that wonderful privilege to try to help people in our country who need it the most." - [01:33] Melania Trump: "Donald J. Trump. is ready to serve and lead." ## Questions this video answers - Who does Melania Trump introduce and present as the next president? [01:33] - How does Melania Trump describe Donald Trump's character and leadership? [00:47] - What does Melania Trump say she would do as First Lady? [01:19] - What goals does Melania Trump say Donald Trump has for the country? [01:05] - How does the speech end? [01:42] ## Content suitability - politics [00:20-01:57]: Political convention speech endorsing a presidential candidate.  by [Jay Newton-Small / Cleveland](https://time.com/author/jay-newton-small/)  ## Jay Newton-Small / Cleveland Jul 20, 2016 12:19 AM UTC Melania Trump’s speech lay towards the end of a long evening of the Republican National Convention’s TV broadcast like the pot of gold at the end of—well, not a rainbow. Perhaps a minefield.  by [Jay Newton-Small / Cleveland](https://time.com/author/jay-newton-small/)  ## Jay Newton-Small / Cleveland Jul 20, 2016 12:19 AM UTC Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway has long lamented the Republican Party’s deficiencies with female voters. She has exhorted GOP leaders for years that “it’s not a special interest group when women make up more than half the electorate,” and she co-authored a book with Democratic pollster Celinda Lake in 2005 entitled: [_What Women Really Want: How American Women Are Quietly Erasing Political, Racial, Class, and Religious Lines to Change the Way We Live_](https://www.amazon.com/What-Women-Really-Want-Political/dp/0743273834/?tag=timecom-20). So how is she finding her newest job working for the GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump, who has a notoriously fraught relationship with women and women voters? Just great, thanks. “There’s no question” that Donald Trump would be better for American women than Hillary Clinton, Conway tells TIME in an interview. Clinton “runs around saying, ‘I’ll be the first female president.’ Why isn’t she at 70 percent amongst women? She’s nowhere near there and you know why? It’s because women say, ‘You share my gender, that’s really fascinating, that’s kind of cool, but do you share my vision, do you share my values?’” Trump, who has gotten in trouble for sexist statements about [Clinton](http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/27/donald-trump-keeps-playing-womans-card-against-hillary-clinton/?%5Fr=0), Fox News anchor [Megyn Kelly](http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/08/politics/donald-trump-cnn-megyn-kelly-comment/), former rival [Carly Fiorina](http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/carly-fiorina-takes-donald-trump-task-face-faux-pas) and [Heidi Cruz](http://time.com/4271578/trump-cruz-melania-heidi-props/), the wife of another former rival Ted Cruz, has [struggled in general election polls amongst female voters](http://www.npr.org/2016/05/26/479319725/the-trump-clinton-gender-gap-could-be-the-largest-in-more-than-60-years), consistently trailing Clinton, the first female nominee of a major party. Since the 1988 presidential election, female voters have swung increasingly Democratic. In order to win the White House, Republican nominees have had to limit the loss of female voters to Democrats to less than 10 percentage points. Trump has consistently trailed well beyond 10 points amongst female voters in most polls. Conway says she believes Trump gaining “a little bit” with women in swing states. “You see a real crystallizing of Republican women and independent women are more going his way,” she says, though she grants that he’s unlikely to gain in national polls. She cites Trump’s improved messaging “on showing compassion” in the wake of recent attacks, including the Orlando attack, the shooting of two unarmed African American men by police caught on video in mid-July and the killing of five Dallas police officers at a Black Lives Matter rally. Trump, she noted, canceled his campaign schedule while Clinton continued to stump. But she believes that Trump’s appeal is broader than dissatisfaction with Clinton. “I think that when people take the full measure of the man,” Conway says, “they’ll see that Donald Trump has continually hired and promoted women in \[the construction\] industry that didn’t have women participating in it higher up in the 1970s and ’80s.” Conway says that Trump’s decisive and forceful personality appeals to women, which Clinton is, by her own admission, not a “[natural politician](http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/hillary-clinton-i-am-not-a-natural-politician-220544),” who is often overshadowed by her husband and President Barack Obama. “In 2008, 56 percent of Democratic primary and caucus goers were female and she lost. This time a similar number were female and she really struggled; she lost 23 states to Bernie Sanders,” Conway says. “She struggles with millenial women. She struggles with her own party,” Conway says. Clinton, she adds, has runs tens of millions of dollars worth of television ads versus zero from the Trump campaign and thus far those ads have not seemed to make much of an impact. Conway argues that Clinton is out of touch because she hasn’t driven a car or cooked her own food or written her own speeches in decades. When asked if Trump, a billionaire, was any more in touch with the people, Conway says: “Donald Trump embraces his wealth. Hillary Clinton wants us to forget that she made $21.5 million on 92 speeches.” Change, Conway says, is important and Trump represents the same spirit of change that Bill Clinton did in 1992 and Obama did in 2008\. “2016 is a change election and that favors Trump,” she says. Whether that remains a persuasive case for female voters remains to be seen. ## Transcript [00:00] [ MUSIC ] [00:10] [ APPLAUSE ] [00:20] It is my great honor. To present the [00:25] next First Lady of the United States, [00:30] my wife, an amazing mother, an [00:34] incredible woman, Melania Trump. thank you very much. [00:38] Thank you. Thank [00:43] you. [ MUSIC ] Thank you very much. [00:47] You have all been very kind to Donald [00:51] and me. Donald has a great, and deep and unbounding [00:57] determination. Donald is, and always has been an [01:01] amazing leader. Yes, Donald thinks big [01:05] Donald gets things done. Donald wants prosperity [01:10] for all Americans. Donald intends to represent [01:14] all the people. And most importantly, he will never, [01:19] ever let you down. If I'm honored to serve as First Lady [01:24] I will use that wonderful privilege to try to help people in [01:28] our country who need it the most. Ladies and gentlemen [01:33] Donald J. Trump. is ready to serve and lead. [01:38] This country as the next president of the United States. [01:42] [ SOUND ] [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you, God bless [01:45] you, and God bless America. [01:49] [ MUSIC ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4414067/donald-trump-pollster-kellyanne-conway-women/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4414067/donald-trump-pollster-kellyanne-conway-women/"},"headline":"Donald Trump's Pollster Argues He'd Do More for Women","datePublished":"2016-07-20T00:19:36.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-06T09:42:20.922Z","description":"Kellyanne Conway says Trump is and will gain ground with female voters","url":"https://time.com/4414067/donald-trump-pollster-kellyanne-conway-women/","keywords":["Donald Trump","Hillary Clinton","2016 Election","kellyanne conway"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1774ecfc327f9310/69889ca73c163942ca45e199/kellyanne-conway.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jay Newton-Small / Cleveland"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1774ecfc327f9310/69889ca73c163942ca45e199/kellyanne-conway.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Kellyanne Conway, president and chief executive officer of Polling Co. Inc./Woman Trend, speaks during an interview on \"With All Due Respect\" in New York, U.S., on Tuesday, July 5, 2016.","caption":"Kellyanne Conway, president and chief executive officer of Polling Co. Inc./Woman Trend, speaks during an interview on \"With All Due Respect\" in New York, U.S., on Tuesday, July 5, 2016.","creditText":"Bloomberg—Bloomberg via Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/tag/donald-trump/","name":"Donald Trump"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4414067/donald-trump-pollster-kellyanne-conway-women/","name":"Donald Trump's Pollster Argues He'd Do More for Women"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Perfect Discomfort of Melania Trump’s Convention Speech","description":"Melania Trump’s speech lay towards the end of a long evening of the Republican National Convention’s TV broadcast like the pot of gold at the end of—well, not a rainbow. Perhaps a minefield.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/dBYuDa54/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2016-07-19T03:53:06.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/dBYuDa54.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4414067/donald-trump-pollster-kellyanne-conway-women/","duration":"PT1M57S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4414067/donald-trump-pollster-kellyanne-conway-women/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```