Less than a week before the presidential election, TikTok is full of daughters eager to “cancel out” their dads’ votes by casting ballots for Democrat Kamala Harris.
The videos usually include a jaunty dance and the women slipping on some sunglasses. Some of the tongue-in-cheek videos feature Taylor Swift ― the ultimate avatar for “childless cat ladies” this election season ― carrying one of her Scottish fold cats and superimposed over a voting center. (Click the links in this story to play the videos.)
Sometimes, conservative dads even make an appearance in the videos.
“Just a father and daughter cancelling out each others vote,” says one clip showing a dad and daughter shaking hands before casting divergent votes.
Gia Erichson, a 30-year-old actor who lives in New York City, is among the young women who’ve jumped on the trend. Every general election she’s voted in so far has involved Republican Donald Trump, so Erichson says she’s more than ready for a change.
“I think the ‘on my way to cancel my dad’s vote’ TikToks are not only hilarious, but reaffirms my belief that women, especially young women, are so incredibly powerful when we all come together,” she said.
The trend highlights the stark gender divide of this election: A USA Today/Suffolk University survey released last week showed Trump up by 16 percentage points with men nationally, while Harris was up by 17 points with women.
The most obvious reason for that gap is probably the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade under Trump-appointed judges, and GOP legislators’ openness to a nationwide ban on abortion. After Senate Republicans blocked legislation designed to protect women’s access to contraception earlier this year, many voters are worried about the future of birth control under a potential Trump administration.
As a left-leaning bisexual woman from southeastern Louisiana, Erichson told HuffPost that she’s no stranger to political arguments over topics like abortion when she returns home.
Her dad ― “a ‘logical’ engineer”― votes Republican and, more pointedly, for Trump because he appreciates the fact that Trump is a businessman. (Her mother isn’t voting for Trump. “My parents could not be more different politically, which I guess makes it track that they are divorced,” Erichson said, laughing.)
“Whenever conversations of politics come up with my dad, it devolves into me being called ‘a lost cause’ or ‘thinking too emotionally,’” she said. “It breaks my heart that my father views logic and emotion as opposites and, even worse, empathy as some kind of weakness. But I will keep having these difficult conversations with him, because I believe real progress lies in the courage to have them.”
Jeanne, a 44-year-old writer from Tucson, Arizona, made a TikTok video, too. (Like others quoted in this piece, Jeanne asked to use only her first name to protect her privacy.)
“Seeing the trend take off made me realize there were so many of us women out there having to grapple with the reality of using our voices and votes to counteract our dads’,” she said. “I posted one [video] to build solidarity and add a little levity to the situation.”
Jeanne said she loves her dad but finds his affinity for Trump to be the
“most confusing thing.”
“The man who raised me is old-fashioned in the best way ― generous, loyal and gentlemanly,” she said. “So to watch him become consumed by xenophobic fears is heartbreaking. It makes me deeply angry with the machine of Donald Trump.”
Others are just relieved they don’t have to cancel out a boyfriend’s or husband’s vote, like some women on TikTok say they’re doing this year. (There are plenty of videos in which women brag about how they don’t have to cancel out their dad’s or their partner’s vote since they’re all voting similarly.)
In a related trend, other women in Generation Z are posting reaction videos to Trump’s 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape. The recording, which surfaced ahead of the 2016 presidential election, included him bragging about being able to grab women “by the pussy.”
The caption to one TikTok video — posted by Soleil Golden, 22, and Alex, a 26-year-old content creator who goes by @awalmartparkinglot on the platform — reads, “this is who fathers. with daughters. are voting for.”
“I see so many people — men in particular on TikTok — talking about how they want to vote for Trump because of the family values that he and Vance claim to stand on,” Golden told HuffPost, referring to GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance.
“The fact that fathers and women with daughters, sisters, moms, nieces — people who they would want to protect around somebody like that — are still voting for that man really made me think, maybe they haven’t heard this whole tape or maybe they’ve forgotten about it,” she said.
The pair also realized a lot of first-time voters were only 10 or 12 when the Trump audio was released and may not be as familiar with it as other voters.
“It is super important for young women to hear this audio and really understand who this man is,” Alex said of her video, which currently has over 980,00 views.
The TikTok trend is tongue-in-cheek, but it gets at real hurt: ‘MAGA stole my father from us.’
Heather, a 48-year-old from Washington state, posted a TikTok on a similar theme, though hers is more somber in tone. “My father traded the rights and safety of his two daughters and four granddaughters for low gas prices,” she wrote in her video, which has over 300,000 views.
“My father has always been GOP. But over the past nine years, he has morphed into a closed-minded, aggressive MAGA type who spends hours a day online, doing his ‘own research,’” she told HuffPost, referencing Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. “I really feel like MAGA stole my father from us.”
When Trump surrendered to authorities last year on charges that he illegally plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia, Heather texted her dad a photo of Trump’s stony-faced booking shot.
“My dad responded only with ‘my hero!’” she recalls.
Heather and her dad are not estranged, but with three Trump election cycles, she said their relationship is hanging on by a thread.
“I’ve shared my feelings with my father, and he mocked my feelings,” she said.
“He told me, ‘You are making decisions on your feelings?’ His tone was condescending and patronizing. I have not brought the topic up since that phone call, approximately three years ago.”
Minna, a 28-year-old from Detroit, Michigan, who describes herself as something of a moderate, said her dad also downplays her political beliefs because she shows her emotions. She tells him she votes for Trump just to avoid drama, but she already turned in her ballot and she, too, canceled out her dad’s vote.
“Another four years of Trump really scares me,” she said. “I worry about my LGBTQ friends, and I worry about access to women’s health care — and by that I mean abortion. I feel so disrespected as a woman that my father doesn’t see those things as being major issues.”
Family estrangements are seemingly on the rise in part due to politics. This is not the average “differences of opinion” debate; the “your dad is voting for George Bush while you’re voting for Bill Clinton” scenario of yesterday seems almost quaint in comparison.
“There’s a lot of fear around the outcome of the election, understandably, because so many people’s lives and futures are hanging in the balance,” said Deborah Duley, a psychotherapist and the founder of the company Empowered Connections in Maryland.
“What my younger clients are telling me is that they’re hearing their parents spouting the virtues of Trump and ignoring that their child could very well be stripped of their rights and bodily autonomy,” she explained.
“Many dads haven't and wouldn't want to miss an important event in their daughters' lives, yet they aren't realizing that this election is one of them.”
- Avonley Whitsitt, a marriage and family therapist in Boise, Idaho
And as the TikTok trend suggests, this election is deeply impacting the relationships between fathers and daughters especially.
“There’s this dichotomy between young women’s fathers saying they love them, and then actively voting in a way that says otherwise and doesn’t feel like love at all,” said Avonley Whitsitt, a marriage and family therapist in Boise, Idaho.
For women worried about abortion and health care, “not only does it show that their fathers’ actions don’t match their words, but it challenges the trust that daughters have with their fathers,” she said.
“My clients are wondering, ‘What do I mean to my dad when he is willing to put his paycheck before my well-being?’” Whitsitt said. “One of my clients recently said, ‘My dad is actively voting against me and my rights, yet somehow I’m supposed to have dinner with him this weekend?’”
She continued, “Many dads haven’t and wouldn’t want to miss an important event in their daughters’ lives, yet they aren’t realizing that this election is one of them.”
Minna, the 28-year-old from Detroit, had reassurance for young women feeling disillusioned by their families’ votes. It’s the same advice she gives her sister, who tends to get emotional talking about things she’s passionate about.
“Just because you tear up when you talk about issues doesn’t mean it’s not valid or important,” she said. “Your thoughts and voice still matter. I don’t blame young women for getting worked up; these are real hard issues. It scares me what my friends’ and loved ones’ lives will look like based on who my father chooses to vote for.”
Whitsitt said her advice to young women in situations like this is to prioritize self-care ahead of and after an election.
“Self-care looks different for everyone. Connecting with a therapist is a great step, setting and maintaining boundaries, and remembering that the relationship you have with yourself is the most important overall,” she said. “In situations like these, sometimes the best thing we can do is be the people we wish our parents or our fathers were.”
