WWhite women voters have been the backbone of the GOP for decades — but polls indicate their support for the party could erode this November, thanks to younger white women who are moving left at breakneck speed.
In the weeks following the 2016 presidential election, after Donald Trump had stunned the world by defeating Hillary Clinton, the media he seized on white women to explain his shocking victory. According to an analysis of validated voter files by the Pew Research Center, 47% of white women voted for Trump, while 45% supported Clinton.
Trump’s success with white women has highlighted a long-standing truth: this group vote for the Republicans. Over the past 72 years, a plurality of white women has voted for the Democratic candidate in only two presidential elections – in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson won 44 states, and in 1996, when Bill Clinton ran in a three-way race. Trump’s lead among white women even grew in 2020, when 53% he supported it. By contrast, 95% of Black women voted for Joe Biden in 2020, along with 61% of Hispanic women, Pew found.
But a lot has changed since 2020, especially for women. The US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, turning abortion rights into a major campaign issue. Kamala Harris has replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, becoming the first black woman to secure a major party’s nomination for president. All of this raises the question: Will 2024 be the year that white women, who make up nearly 40% of the nation’s electorate, finally join women of color in supporting Democrats?
Well, not necessarily. But the gap very well it could reduce.
There are signs that younger white women are moving away from the GOP – a trend that is linked to a steady drift by all young women on the left.
“Young women of color and young white women, in my research, are pretty uniformly liberal and feminist,” said Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of the recent book The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape our democracy. “I think choosing Harris as their nominee now – as opposed to Biden – has made them even more excited to vote. So I strongly suspect that young white voters will challenge the long-term trend of white women in general to vote Republican.”
Young women are increasingly queer, increasingly secular, and marrying later in life – all characteristics that tend to be linked to liberalism and support for the Democratic Party. (People who identify as liberals are most likely Democrats, although the reverse is not necessarily true: not all Democrats identify as liberals.)
Between 2011 and 2024, liberal identification among white women increased by 6 percent, according to a Gallup analysis shared with the Guardian. Such identification also increased by 6% among black women, but decreased by 2% among Hispanic women.
Gen Z is the most diverse generation of Americans yet, but Gallup research suggests that doesn’t explain young women’s leftward drift. Between 2017 and 2024, 41% of white women ages 18 to 29 identified as liberal, 2 percentage points more than their peers of color.
Young women are also unusually involved in politics. Women have long outnumbered men, but 60% of white women ages 18 to 29 voted in 2020, more than any other group of young voters. Learning and civic engagement. 55% voted for Biden.
Trump’s victory in 2016 it may have something to do with these trends. Raised by Democratic-leaning independents, Chloe Fowler said Trump’s election it was a critical turning point in his political evolution. He was a high school sophomore when Trump won; the next day, someone in the hallway of his school gleefully shouted, “Grab ’em by the pussy!”
“Things like that stay with us,” he recalled Fowler, who is white. A few months later, her mother took her to the Women’s March in Omaha, Nebraska. “It was a really pivotal moment for me, honestly: doing a lot of singing with her and wearing the pink hats with the cat ears.”
Fowler is now the vice president of the Nebraska Young Democrats. The 23-year-old was phone-banking furiously in his home district – Nebraska’s second congressional district, which could end up deciding whether Trump or Harris becomes president.
after the promotion of the newsletter
“Why is this race so close?”
A Sept. 19 News/SurveyMonkey poll recently found that white women they narrowly prefer Harris to Trump, 42% to 40%, within a 1% margin of error. The remaining 8% can, of course, determine the success or failure of the elections. The gender gap is larger: Compared to white men, white women prefer Harris by a 6-point margin.
According to the poll, a majority of Black women support Harris, as do a majority of Hispanic and Asian American women.
Jane Junn, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, says that what is often misunderstood as a “gender gap” between male and female voters is actually a racial gap. While women as a whole may end up voting for Harris — a September New York Times/Siena poll showed that 54% of women intended to vote for Harris, compared to 40% of men — white women, Junn predicted , will remain Republican in 2024 “If suddenly white women said, ‘Oh my God, I’m burning my bra, my Barbie shoes, my long nails, and all the plastic spray I put in my body’ — not we would be seeing it,” Junn said. “Why is this race so close? It’s so close because these groups remain fairly consistent in their partisan loyalties.”
A poll by Galvanize Action, an organization that seeks to mobilize moderate women – especially in the critical “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – found the race is tied among white women moderates, who are divided between 43% and 44%. % in favor of the former president. These women, who Galvanize Action characterizes as not ideologically rooted as Democrats or Republicans, represent more than 5 million voters in these three states.
Trump has an edge when it comes to the key women’s issues of economics and immigration, but Women surveyed by Galvanize Action trust Harris more on democracy and reproductive freedom.
“Even among women who say the economy or democracy is their number one issue, a good portion of them also say, ‘I won’t vote for anyone who won’t protect abortion,’” said Jackie Payne, a member of Galvanize Action. executive director and founder.
Democrats hope that ballot measures tied to abortion rights — which voters will decide on in the battlegrounds of Arizona, Nevada and Nebraska’s second congressional district — will spur turnout among their base. However, white women can in fact vote simultaneously voting for a measure in favor of abortion rights and for the Republicans. More than half of white women voted for Ohio’s 2023 abortion ballot measure — but more than 60% of white women supported Mike DeWine, the Republican governor who signed a six-week abortion ban into law, in 2022, just months after Roe fell.
“It will be all about turnout. It will be a very, very close election,” Debbie said Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers. “The Democratic Party counts on women. They rely above all on the participation of black women. Will they be more energetic?”
#white #women #abandon #Republicans #vote #Kamala #Harris