As I posted earlier this week, the successful Virginia strategy was to bet that young women think with and about their reproductive organs as much as do young men. They won that bet.
Gals vote with their emotions: Democrats SAY they want to help the poor, downtrodden etc. etc. Dems pander to gals, going on and on about glass ceilings and nonexistent inequality in the workplace. Women dislike conflict, so opposition to guns and the use of force to deter terrorism puts them with the Dems.
I don't think abortion is the key. The media likes to portray American women as mad to tear their babies’ bodies limb from limb or to scald the defenseless creatures in acid. Yes, there are a few hard eyed baby killers—one thinks of a Boxer , a Sebelius, a Schakowsky, a Michelle—but such unnatural women are rare. Most women love babies and children, despite feminism's 50 year campaign to alter their nurturing nature. Young single men are statistically far more prone to favor abortion than women, by miles if you limit the reference group to married women.