Tribal target Democrats chase voters who may flip to Harris

A siren blares. Feet crunch on gravel. A county sheriff looks into a car and tells a teenage girl he knows she is pregnant. He arrests her father for driving her to a state where she can get an abortion. "And you, young lady," the sheriff says, "well, you're under arrest for evading motherhood."

- David Smith

This is an advert from the Lincoln Project, a pro-democracy group, presenting a dark vision of the future for millions of American women if Donald Trump defeats Kamala Harris in the presidential election and criminalises abortion nationwide. But its target audience includes another crucial group of voters: conservative men.

"Dobbs dads" - named after the supreme court's Dobbs decision, which in 2022 ended the constitutional right to abortion - are suburban gen X and millennial fathers angered by the prospect of "big government" making choices for their wives' and daughters' reproductive healthcare needs.

The group has been identified as crucial by the Lincoln Project's sister organisation, the Lincoln Democracy Institute, along with "Red Dawn conservatives"-inspired by the 1984 film Red Dawn, in which American teenagers fight invading Soviet forces who value a strong national defence and traditional alliances.