No woman in 2024 can be surprised to learn that Donald Trump is a misogynistic bully. In 2016, he defeated Hillary Clinton, who would have been America’s first female president, despite having boasted that as a celebrity you could “grab ’em by the pussy”. His administration rolled back women’s rights by decades in redefining domestic abuse and sexual assault. The supreme court justices he appointed overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. Last year, a jury found that he had sexually abused E Jean Carroll in the 1990s, despite his ongoing denials.

Yet his remark on Thursday that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not” was still striking. It was not a promise but a threat. It echoed the language of a gangland boss assuring you that your business will be just fine. But it also, and most obviously, recalled the words of a controlling husband or boyfriend who knows what is best for you. It is not merely that he thinks that women’s rights are expendable: he and his supporters are coming for them.

Those comments have further ignited discussion of whether women can win this election for Kamala Harris. But the gender gap has in large part been a race gap. Women have favoured the Democratic candidate in every presidential race since 1996 – but white women have done so only once. They are the single largest electoral bloc, making up about 30% of voters. More white women voted for Mr Trump than Ms Clinton in 2016 – and most white women (53%) backed him last time. In contrast, 95% of black women and 61% of Hispanic women backed Joe Biden.

This time, there are signs that white women may be moving towards Ms Harris. One September poll put her support in that group at 42%, compared with 40% for Mr Trump. Women were credited with preventing the “red wave” that many had predicted in 2022’s midterms, after the sweeping away of abortion rights. The repercussions for women’s lives are becoming only more widespread, deeply felt and glaring with time. Things would get much worse if Mr Trump won again, despite his flip-flopping as he tries to play down the issue. He has tied his “protection” of women not only to his racist remarks about supposedly predatory migrants (when in fact women are vastly more at risk from the men they live with), but also to the suggestion that women “will not be thinking about abortion” if he is re-elected.

Grotesquely sexist, sexualised and crude remarks directed at Ms Harris – in addition to marginally more subtle racism and misogyny – may fire up his male base by belittling her, but alienate others. Mr Trump’s running mate JD Vance’s denigration of “childless cat ladies” and older remarks about whether violence should end a marriage have hardly helped. Young women increasingly identify as liberal, and put abortion at the top of their concerns (while for women overall, it comes a close second to the economy and inflation). A generational gender gap is increasingly seen internationally. But some evidence suggests that younger male Trump supporters are less likely to vote.

There may still be shy Trump voters not reflected in the polls. But there are certainly scared potential Harris voters who do not want the men in their lives to know. That’s why campaigners are reassuring them that their vote will remain secret. It is a frightening reminder that this election is, in every sense, about women’s right to choose.