As former President Donald Trump tries to increase his appeals, saying he will be a “protector” of women, Harris is hoping women reject him as she seeks to clinch the White House.

Democrats are optimistic about voter turnout among women. Almost 61 million people have voted before polls close on Nov. 5, and among the states that collect voter gender data, 51% are women and 44% are men, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab.

But despite the early vote share favoring women, Harris and her allies don’t appear to be easing up on messaging toward the voting bloc, with her campaign reminding women married to Republican men that their votes are private and confidential.

Harris and her campaign have also sought to emphasize the second part of his vow to protect women, as he says he will do so whether they “like it or not.”

Trump’s pledge to protect women, made while he was wearing a high-visibility vest to draw attention to President Joe Biden’s “garbage” comment about the former president’s supporters, came during one of his rallies in Wisconsin this week, despite warnings from his advisers to not do so.

“It actually is very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right, and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies,” Harris told reporters on Thursday in Wisconsin before heading to Arizona and Nevada.

The vice president said, “This is just the latest on a series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency, whether he has said, as he has, that women should be punished for their choices, whether he has talked about his pride in taking away a fundamental right from women.”

Democrats have welcomed the Harris campaign’s strategy for women, but Republicans are criticizing its tactics, including having high-profile surrogates remind women their votes are secret if they want to cast their ballot for a different person than their husband.

Liberal evangelical organization Vote Common Good, for instance, launched a six-figure digital ad campaign this week, in which actress Julia Roberts says, “in the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want and no one will ever know.”

“Remember, what happens in the booth, stays in the booth,” Roberts adds. “Vote Harris-Walz.”

The Vote Common Good ad is a more direct pitch than that of former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who earlier this month told a crowd at an event with Harris in Detroit that “if you’re at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody.”

“There will be millions of Republicans who do that on Nov. 5,” she said.

Then last weekend former first lady Michelle Obama told a crowd at another Harris event in another Michigan city, Kalamazoo, that women have “every right to demand that the men in our lives do better by us,” particularly regarding abortion access and reproductive healthcare.

“We have to use our voices to make these choices clear to the men that we love,” Obama said Saturday. “If you are a woman who lives in a household of men that don’t listen to you or value your opinion, just remember that your vote is a private matter.”

Then on Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) responded to a social media post about a grassroots campaign in which women are putting Post-it notes with the same message in battleground state restrooms because women in conservative areas are under pressure not to support Harris.

“This is real,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “When I do Instagram Q&As (where people can ask me questions privately and have them publicly answered), this comes up a lot more than you’d think.”

Democratic strategist Tracy Sefl praised the grassroots campaign, saying she had even seen a note off of a central Illinois expressway.

“It’s very smart to remind everyone, not just women, that their ballots are theirs alone,” Sefl told the Washington Examiner. “The votes that will come from reminding women that their vote is secret and that the stakes have never been higher is what could carry Harris to victory.”  

But Republican strategist Jeannette Hoffman condemned the tactic as “super offensive” because women are independent, asking whether it is the 1950s.

“I don’t know any woman who’s afraid of what their husband thinks of who they vote for,” Hoffman told the Washington Examiner. “To imply that, and then in a TV ad, that women are somehow subservient to their husbands and how they vote is, for Democrats to say that, to me, that’s frankly offensive.”

Hoffman’s offense coincides with Democratic offense to Trump reiterating that he would be a “protector” of women, the Harris campaign reminding voters Trump nominated Supreme Court justices who were instrumental in repealing abortion precedent Roe v. Wade through Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“Trump telling women he’ll be their protector whether they like it or not is another grotesque reminder that this man, the convicted felon, does not care about the concept of consent,” Sefl, the Democratic strategist, said.

The Trump campaign has countered by amplifying billionaire Harris endorser Mark Cuban on Thursday contending that “you never” see the former president with “strong, intelligent women, ever.”

“It’s just that simple,” Cuban told ABC’s The View. “They’re intimidating to them. He doesn’t like to be challenged by them.”

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt called Cuban’s comment “extremely insulting” to the “thousands of women” who work for Trump and the “tens of millions of women” who have or are voting for him.

“The joy at Kamala HQ has been replaced by division, vitriol, and a disturbing level of disrespect for the millions of Americans who are supporting President Trump after four years of destruction under Kamala Harris,” Leavitt told reporters. “Kamala Harris must immediately condemn Mark Cuban’s disrespectful insult to women.”

As Trump continues his overtures to men, best demonstrated by this summer’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and last weekend’s Madison Square Garden Rally in New York City, with performances by Kid Rock to appearances by Hulk Hogan, his campaign circulated a new video for black men with the hashtag, “I’m Not With Her,” on Thursday. 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton‘s campaign motto was “I’m With Her.”

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who herself has endorsed Trump, has scrutinized the former president’s campaign for its base strategy and prioritizing men without reaching out to women.

“This is not a time for them to get overly masculine with this bromance thing that they have got going; 53% of the electorate are women,” Haley told Fox News this week. “It borders on edgy to the point that it’s going to make women uncomfortable. You have got affiliated PACs that are doing commercials about calling Kamala the C-word. Or you had speakers at Madison Square Garden referring to her and her pimps.”

Hoffman encouraged Trump to discuss border security and immigration “because clearly those are his strengths” and “women care” about those issues, in addition to inflation and the economy, indirect advice related to his current message of being a “protector.”

“He, more than other politicians, can get away with that because people don’t view him as a typical politician, whereas if someone else said that, it might be a little bit more offensive,” she said.

At the same time, she argued it was the right move for Trump to be proactive with respect to in vitro fertilization after the Alabama state Supreme Court ruling last February, considering the political toxicity of the issue for Republicans.

“If the Republican Party wants to be pro-family, they need to clarify their position as being pro-IVF as well,” she said.