Vice President Kamala Harris was going to ride to victory on a wave of votes from women motivated by their support for abortion rights, their desire to see the first female president, and — most of all — their disgust with former President Donald Trump as a person. That was the story that pollsters and the mainstream media told in the lead up to the election.

It was dead wrong.

The dust is still settling, but according to CNN, Trump appears to have lost women voters, 45% to 53% to Harris, while winning men 55% to 42%. That means Trump won a greater share of women’s votes than in 2020.

The Harris campaign had sought to terrify women about abortion and contraception, including the baseless claim that electing Trump would leave women to die from ectopic pregnancy. Women didn’t fall for it.

That doesn’t mean that the majority of women don’t still support legal abortion rights, at least early in pregnancy – indeed most abortion-related ballot initiatives won, with Florida, Nevada, Nebraska and South Dakota being the notable exceptions.

But the results showed that women aren’t single issue voters. Far from it. Women were mostly concerned with the economy, safety and immigration, and a government that seemed to have lost touch with common sense.

None of this should be surprising. Women, like men, are deeply dissatisfied with the direction of our country. They feel worse off than they were four years ago and believe that the Biden-Harris administration’s policies — from fueling inflation to opening the border — have contributed to their problems.

Women, especially older women, have been plagued with economic anxiety, worrying that if they lose their jobs they will never find another that pays as well and that they won’t be able to afford to retire. Women are horrified to see the radical culture pushed on children, mostly at the expense of women and girls, with female athletes pushed aside for male competitors, female inmates being re-traumatized with bunking up with male inmates, and sexual assault survivors forced to share showers and locker rooms with men.

The real question is how pollsters and political experts could have thought that these very real and urgent concerns could be swept away by vacuous memes related to joy and celebrity endorsements. Many seemed to assume that women ignore their own personal situations and support Harris out of a solidarity with the sisterhood and a desire to see a woman in the White House.

I suspect that deeper research will reveal the opposite. Women didn’t like seeing such a weak and unprepared woman on the brink of making history as our first female president. Women don’t want to think of the first female president as too frightened to do a podcast with Joe Rogan. It was demeaning to see Gov. Tim Walz babysitting Harris during interviews. It was impossible to imagine Harris actually acting as our commander in chief since she was so indecisive and rehearsed that she couldn’t answer a simple yes or no question about her position on a California crime bill.

American women may look forward to our first madame president. Yet we want someone worthy of the title. It was painfully obvious that Harris was not.

Among the best news coming out of this election is that it confirmed that women, like men, were able to see through and reject the overwrought hyperbole about Trump. Women recognized that voting for Trump didn’t mean you had to love Trump or even like him personally.

Voting for him wasn’t to endorse his every position or every comment. Women recognized the over-the-top accusations about Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance – calling them Nazis, would-be dictators who want to break up interracial marriages, strip away educational support for those with special needs, and end democracy – for what it was: An embarrassing attempt to scare voters. Women didn’t buy it; good for them.

Democrat talking heads on MSNBC and CNN are now mulling over next steps for rebuilding their party and reconnecting with disaffected voters. They clearly aren’t worried about democracy’s end either. They knew it was pure political posturing and the lowest of campaign tactics. The mainstream media that parroted these lies will need to do similar soul searching if they are to rebuild their reputation with a public that increasingly doesn’t believe them.

Women now will be looking for results. They will want to see changes at the border, safer cities, better economic times on the horizon, reforms to our healthcare system to increase transparency and trustworthiness, an education system that prioritizes learning over indoctrination and a restoration of common sense. That is how they will judge President Trump and Vice President Vance, which is exactly as it should be.

Carrie Lukas is president of Independent Women’s Forum.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.