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Trump Is Losing Educated GOP Women That Will Cost Him The Election
Trump Is Losing Educated GOP Women—and Splitting Up Families Along the Way
Trump is losing educated white women to Hillary Clinton by a staggering 30 points, 57 percent to 27 percent College-educated Republican women will cost Trump the election. Trump is splitting Republican households, with wives canceling out their husbands’ votes for the GOP. One wife credits her husband's perception of Clinton due to his constant watching of Fox News. “I don’t think that any of it is actually based in reality.” As the election ticks down to the wire, there’s a glaring disadvantage staring the Trump campaign in the face. For months, polls have shown that Donald Trump will require a white supermajority to offset his historic deficits among African-Americans and Latinos in order to secure even a narrow victory in November. It’s now becoming clear that Trump isn’t hitting the numbers he needs—and that one demographic is standing in the way of the plan. “The main factor behind Trump’s underperformance among white voters,” according to a Monmouth poll conducted over the summer, “is his lack of support among white women with a college degree.” Educated women, it appears, are defecting in droves from the GOP, and the numbers are stark. Trump is losing educated white women to Hillary Clinton by a staggering 30 points, 57 to 27 percent, according to Monmouth, and other polls have shown similar numbers. This is a huge change since 2012, when Romney won that demographic by 6 points. “If Clinton can sustain the support of white educated women shown in recent polls,” writes the Brookings Institution's William Frey, “she can overcome supersized turnout of white working class men.” And that, he concludes, would be “historic”—“by making white college-educated women a lynchpin of a decisive Democratic win.” Trump is splitting Republican households, with wives canceling out their husbands’ votes for the GOP; many will pull the lever for Hillary despite strong resistance and flat-out opposition from their spouses, families and communities. And many are even keeping their decision a secret from those closest to them. Americans might be used to thinking of politics as an either/or choice, but for GOP women voters, breaking ranks is more complicated. Both Sarah and Carol came to their decisions slowly and reluctantly. Carol originally planned to cast her vote for Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson; after the Republican primary debates, Sarah thought she wouldn’t vote at all. But the more she learned about both party nominees—including the Republican presidential nominee calling women “naive,” repeatedly commenting on their appearance and referring to women as a “sleaze” and a “bimbo”—the more determined she became to vote for Clinton. “To me, this is not a year that a third-party candidate is a vote that I want to—I don’t want to say ‘waste,’ but this isn’t the time to do that,” said Sarah. “This is such a critical, pivotal moment in our nation’s history. I don’t want to waste even one vote. It’s not worth it to me.” Carol, similarly, is motivated by her worries about Trump, but she also sees Clinton as a highly educated and uniquely experienced woman who would do “a pretty bang-up job.” Her husband, however, “absolutely loathes” the Democratic candidate. She doesn’t know or understand where his dislike for Clinton comes from. That conversation is “too infuriating” to pursue, she says, adding, “I don’t think that any of it is actually based in reality.” She credits his perception of Clinton due to his constant watching of Fox News. Trump’s difficulty winning over women isn’t a trivial problem: Women have shown up to vote in higher numbers than men for every presidential election since 1980, with the difference between the sexes totaling up to almost 4 percentage points—63.7 women, 59.8 percent men—in 2012. The gender gap of support for Clinton averages about 11 points, and she won more votes from women than men in every primary. Politico Magazine 10-4-16 http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...mp-2016-214318 
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