How did Moderate White Women’s Opinions Change in 2025?
In 2025, Galvanize Action conducted three particularly fascinating surveys to gauge ideologically-moderate women’s opinions about key issues and current events. One ran in January, another in March, and another in November so we could keep a finger on the pulse of shifting opinions. Now that all the data is in, let’s take a closer look at all three of those surveys together so we can see what changed, what stayed the same, and what that means for Galvanize Action’s work this year.
It’s important to understand that these surveys involved different groups of ideologically-moderate women, not the exact same women each time.
Let’s take a look issue-by-issue:
Economy
The economy was the most important issue to ideologically-moderate women across all surveys in 2025 (and in fact, across all of our surveys so far). Between the March and November surveys, the economy appeared to become even more important to our audience. Thirty percent selected the economy as their top issue in March, and this rose to 36% in November.
Meanwhile their trust in government and the government’s economic solutions remained low.
At the start of 2025, more respondents distrusted than trusted the government to help them make ends meet (42% disagree vs. 35% agree). Broadly, expectations grew increasingly negative from there. For example, between January and March, ideologically-moderate women became slightly less likely to believe grocery costs would decrease.
By November, a full majority (61%) said the current administration’s economic performance is worse than they expected (38% much worse; 23% somewhat worse). It’s clear that ideologically-moderate women don’t currently feel like the economy is working for families like theirs—we’ll come back to this later.
Abortion
Support for abortion being at least mostly legal remained stable over time.
In the first survey, 72% said abortion should be always or mostly legal. Seventy percent said the same in March, which is within the margin of error. Despite this support, abortion is not a top-tier priority issue for this audience, and just 2% of respondents selected it as their most important issue the last time we asked.
Immigration
Attitudes about immigration were largely mixed all throughout 2025. Ideologically-moderate white women have conflicting beliefs when it comes to immigration, largely shaped by concerns around safety, who is “deserving,” and a strong sense of nationalism. The majority of women in our audience support fair, humane immigration policies and oppose extreme actions such as mass deportation. At the same time, they want strong border security and worry about their own safety
A few examples: In the January survey, 40% (a plurality!) agreed immigrants make America better for everyone. However, slightly more respondents agreed (36%) than disagreed (34%) that immigrants increase crime rates, indicating a tension between viewing immigration as beneficial and associating it with potential risks. By November, a near majority (46%) said the current administration is performing worse than expected on immigration, suggesting opposition to last year’s violent measures.
“Red Lines”
Between March and November, ideologically-moderate white women’s definitions of “red lines” (actions or events that would make them feel compelled to speak up or take action) remain largely unchanged. The most notable change is a decline in safety-based reluctance: the share saying they would not risk their safety to oppose any of these actions drops from 20% in March to 11% in November, while the share saying they would not oppose any actions remains very low and stable (4–5%). We asked the same question in a different survey in August; you can see all three sets of results below.
| March | August | November | |
| Allows the military to use deadly force against peaceful protesters | 58% | 58% | 56% |
| Uses the justice system to jail political opponents without proof they did anything wrong | 54% | 53% | 52% |
| Passes a law taking away custody rights from transgender, lesbian, and gay parents and forcing their children to be taken from them | 51% | 46% | 48% |
| Uses federal agencies to stop media outlets from criticizing elected officials | 41% | 38% | 41% |
| Takes away citizenship from children born in the U.S. to immigrant parents who came here illegally | 43% | 42% | 43% |
| Passes a law that forces people to report anyone who isn’t a citizen to the government | 44% | 41% | 40% |
| Refuses to abide by lawful court orders and takes unconstitutional actions | 52% | 50% | 52% |
| I would not oppose any of these actions | 4% | 6% | 5% |
| I would not risk my safety or the safety of my loved ones to oppose any of these actions | 20% | 21% | 11% |
The responses above are mostly stable, but there is no issue that more women said was a “red line” as 2025 progressed.
IT’S STILL THE ECONOMY
All of our research points to the narratives we need to be sharing with our audience in order to move closer to an America that works better for everyone. The economy has always been front and center for women in our audience: their ability to make ends meet is key. Economic security shapes how women think about the health of the country, their hope for the future, and their trust in government. It shapes their view of “the other,” and their perception of the American economy as a zero-sum affair. We need to help women see that it’s corrupt bad actors and unfair systems causing their economic hardships, not other Americans who are just trying to get by.
We’ll be contrasting hopeful messaging with their current reality: they are not currently experiencing economic security, health, and safety because of the corruption and greed that is running rampant. This strategy is supported by what history has taught us: naming and fighting corruption is key to countering authoritarianism.
We are ready to meet the moment, so look out for more messaging at the intersection of economic security, social cohesion, and civic engagement this year and beyond!
