I’ve noticed a controversy recently about the gender gap. For example, in the aftermath of the Virginia gubernatorial election last month, it was noted that Terry McAuliffe won on the strength of his support among women, but white women actually preferred Bob Cuccinelli. This led some women of color to complain that they weren’t getting the credit they deserved, or that white women were getting credit that they didn’t deserve. It’s an important point, but it doesn’t really reflect a proper understanding of the gender gap. It used to be that white women and white men voted very similarly, but in recent years white women have shown more inclination than white men to vote Democratic. That doesn’t mean that they prefer the Democrats overall, only that they demonstrate more support than white men. That’s the gap.
Another way of looking at it is that you can control for everything else, like race, religiosity, region, and income, and you’ll discover that women lean further to the left than men. Some of those subgroups will still show an overall rightward lean, but not as large a one as seen with their male counterparts in the correlating subgroups.
Even if you want to focus on the fact that white women still lean a little to the right, you have to take note of certain facts. For example, 59 of the 78 female members of the House are Democrats, and 20 of the 24 freshmen women are Democrats. Seventeen of the twenty female senators are Democrats, and all of them are white. The leader of the Democrats in the House is Nancy Pelosi, and several Democratic women have assumed leadership positions in the Senate.
Having said all that, I think political commentators often treat women of color as if they are black or brown first and only women second. Women prefer the Democrats by a healthy margin, and if they didn’t vote Mitt Romney probably would have won about 47 states. Other than the president, the two most popular politicians among Democrats are Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren.
People talk a lot about how demographic changes (primarily, the browning of America) are moving the country to the left and making it harder and harder for the GOP to cobble together an Electoral College majority, but the gender gap is equally important in explaining this trend. Simply put, while it’s true that the Republicans cannot afford to lose 78% of the Latino vote, they also cannot afford to lose as many white women as they’ve been losing. And they’re losing those votes for the same reason that they’re losing Latino votes. Their policies are hostile to women’s interests. Unless the Republicans make a split with the social conservatives on women’s rights and elements of public assistance, they will not be sending anyone to the Oval Office anytime soon.
