Sep 8 \u2013 Surrounded by food trucks, Ferris wheels and funnel cake stands on a hot August afternoon, Stephanie Soucek has one goal in mind.<\/p>\n
The 42-year-old chair of the Republican Party in Door County, a bellwether district in the battleground state of Wisconsin, is at the county fair to urge undecided voters to cast a ballot for Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Upon meeting Tammy Conway, a Democrat who is considering voting Republican for the first time in decades, Ms Soucek begins talking about her own family\u2019s two expensive car payments, an economic message that seems to resonate.<\/p>\n
Ms Conway is concerned about \u201csky-high\u201d housing interest rates and said Trump might make the economy \u201ca lot less complicated\u201d.<\/p>\n
But as Ms Soucek lays out her case for the Republican presidential candidate, she avoids mentioning the latest spate of controversial remarks Trump has made, including personal attacks on Democratic challenger Kamala Harris.<\/p>\n
\u201cI try to tell people to focus on the policies and ignore the candidates,\u201d she said, knowing that Trump\u2019s brash personality has deterred women previously.<\/p>\n
Republican officials in a handful of swing states \u2013 where the election is likely to be decided \u2013 are adopting Ms Soucek\u2019s strategy of promoting policy over personality with white suburban female voters. It\u2019s a pivotal voting bloc Trump narrowly won in his first presidential race but has struggled to appeal to since.<\/p>\n
Local Republicans say they wish Trump would adopt a similar approach against Vice-President Harris, whose campaign has been powered by female voters since she replaced Joe Biden at the top of the ticket in July.<\/p>\n
The concern brings into focus the widening gender gap that has come to define the election. Trump is courting young \u2013 especially black and Hispanic \u2013 men while Democrats are working to attract female voters motivated by the overturning of Roe v Wade, a landmark Supreme Court ruling that had enshrined the constitutional right to an abortion.<\/p>\n
An ABC News\/Ipsos released in September suggested the vice-president led the former president 54% to 41% among women \u2013 a seven-point jump since the Democratic National Convention late last month.<\/p>\n
It has some Republicans worried about whether Trump can reverse the trend, Ms Soucek said.<\/p>\n
Ms Soucek (right) talks to Ms Conway (left) about the economy next to cheese curd food trucks at the fair<\/p>\n
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Ms Harris has \u201cimplemented dangerously liberal policies that have left women worse off financially and far less safe than we were four years ago under President Trump\u201d.<\/p>\n
But some who spoke to the BBC said his campaign has remained fixated on men \u2013 not women.<\/p>\n
Republican pollster Christine Matthews said Trump\u2019s team is \u201cdoubling down on a strategy of motivating the Maga base and hoping to motivate men \u2013 particularly non-college-educated men including those who are Hispanic in addition to white \u2013 in a way that will overpower the gender gap\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Trump campaign has leaned into \u201cbro culture\u201d, emphasising masculinity and a contrast of \u201cweak versus tough\u201d, said Chuck Coughlin, a political strategist who works with Republicans in the battleground state of Arizona.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat appeals to a lot of men,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t appeal to unaffiliated voters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s choice of JD Vance as his running mate reinforced how the campaign is prioritising outreach to men. They may not have expected his addition to the ticket to have been so damaging with women voters, however.<\/p>\n
The Ohio senator has faced a backlash over previous comments about women, in particular a 2021 clip in which he calls several Democrats, including Ms Harris, \u201cchildless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives\u201d.<\/p>\n
These types of comments do not help attract swing women voters, according to Betsy Fischer Martin, executive director of the nonpartisan Women & Politics Institute.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are plenty of childless cat ladies voting in the suburbs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But the former president\u2019s campaign rhetoric does not bother some ardent female supporters like Dixie, a 59-year-old Republican from Door County.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not going to tell you what you want to hear. He\u2019s going to tell you the truth,\u201d said Dixie, who declined to share her last name for privacy reasons.<\/p>\n
Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, who served as his 2016 campaign manager, told the BBC that voters could not have his policies without his \u201cstrong and resolute and tough\u201d personality.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople, and particularly women, tend to kvetch and converse and complain about what offends them, and then they vote according to what affects them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n