Friday, November 4, 2016

College-educated white women are Hillary Clinton’s firewall

THE BIG IDEA: One in five voters in 2012 were college-educated white women. Mitt Romney won them by six points, according to exit polls.
Our fresh Washington Post-ABC News Tracking Poll, which has Hillary Clinton ahead by just two points among all likely voters nationally, finds that Donald Trump is losing college-educated white women by 27 points.
If the Republican nominee were anywhere close to Romney’s 52 percent support level among this traditionally Republican-leaning constituency, he would likely win the election. But drilling into the crosstabs of our polling and reviewing credible, state-level data demonstrate how highly unlikely it is that this constituency will waver in the final days. It is one of the reasons that, even though the race has tightened pretty dramatically, Clinton retains a significant structural advantage.
The gender gap is nothing new. Democrats tend to perform exceptionally well with unmarried and minority women. A Pew study in July found that there was no difference in candidate support between men and women in 1972 and 1976, but since 1980 women writ large have preferred Democratic presidential candidates by an average of eight points.
Our national tracking polling shows that the race has moved back toward something close to this historic norm. Men prefer Trump by 11 points (51-40) and women prefer Clinton by 11 points (52-41).
Clinton is ahead only 11 points among women overall because Trump is running up his margin among white women without college degrees. They favor him by 28 points, 61 percent to 33 percent, despite the dozen women who have now come forward publicly to accuse him of sexual misconduct.

But the preference for Clinton among college-educated, white women matters a great deal because they habitually turn out to vote at higher rates than almost every other group of voters, including less-educated women. So, in an election with lagging enthusiasm, this constituency packs a bigger punch.

No comments:

Post a Comment