Remember what I wrote just four days ago about Hillary Clinton having the potential to attract certain kinds of voters without moving to the left or the right to get them? Here’s some new evidence for that hypothesis.
I think it’s safe to say that Hillary isn’t enjoying this marked advantage among white women voters in the early polling due to any positions she’s taken on the issues, whether it be immigration, trade, gay marriage, guns, God or anything else. She’s getting more support from white women primarily because she is a white woman. And it would be wrong to assume that all these women who support Hillary but didn’t support Obama are racists. Some of them are, of course, but many just have an affinity for a candidate who is at least superficially more like them. Others just have positive associations with the Clintons, perhaps because their economic situation was more hopeful in the 1990s than it is today.
So, the next question everyone will ask is if all the McCain/Romney voters she’s gained will be offset by the Obama voters she loses. After all, many people voted for Obama for the same reasons of personal affinity rather than anything specific to his policy proposals. Won’t some of them flip over to the Republican now that the Democratic candidate doesn’t seem like so much of a personal representative?
It’s not possible to say for certain how Hillary will ultimately do with the Obama-specific Democratic base, but the early signs are pretty good.
This polling is confirmation of what I’ve suspected for a long time, which is that Clinton starts out with a bigger base of voters than Obama ever enjoyed. She can lose them, of course. She can fail to energize her core voters and lose a turnout battle. But the base of her support is very big, and certainly bigger than any that a Democrat has enjoyed since probably the mid-1960’s.
That’s the promise she has as a candidate.
Whether she can capitalize on it is a different question. I do, of course, have my doubts.
The better question is: Can she get those white women to vote for a Democrat running for the House of Representatives?
Can she draw white women voters who don’t bother usually? I suspect so. Will that affect down ballot?
In 2016, and one hopes, 2020, yes. Almost certainly.
In 2018? Mid-terms? Who the hell knows?
Here’s a concept (radical, I know!) Howzabout the Dems in 2018 run as Democrats, rather than running scared like they did in 2010 and 2014…
This is actually measuring vote flippers, an otherwise relatively rare phenomenon these days. I suspect for the voters switching sides here, mostly they’ll still vote for a Republican Congress (not all but most). Likely a lot have good memories of the Clinton era and that was, after all, mostly with a Republican Congress.
Hillary will probably also inspire a lot of women who wouldn’t otherwise vote to come to the polls. These women will, I think, overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates otherwise. But this poll doesn’t measure that. You’d want a poll on voting intentions and I suspect such a poll would produce largely garbage results since people lie to themselves about intent to vote.
The most cursory examination of the internet would suggest this can’t possibly be the case.
BooMan, you said:
“She’s getting more support from white women primarily because she is a white woman.”
I think it’s much more likely that any sane woman would take one look at Marco Rubio and Scott Walker and their attitudes toward women and would run, not walk, toward the alternative candidate.
You would have to show me the matchup of Hillary with a less radical candidate – are there any? – before I could conclude that white women support Hillary because she is a white woman.
The fact that she is a white woman will not influence my vote in the slightest.
You need an explanation for the difference between the graphs for Hillary and Obama.
I am all ears.
I would assume race is more of an issue than gender.
Obama has, sadly, been getting the numbers that Gore and Kerry has. I’m sure that race doesn’t help, but he’s not doing much worse.
If it were race then Clinton would show support at Kerry/Gore levels, but the problem is that Kerry/Gore levels with white women voters are close to the same as Obama levels.
No, it’s almost all explained by gender.
Like Watergirl said:
Some Racist white “Democrats” will be flipping back to the Democrats.
I think that a regional breakdown would be more instructive. For example, when we analyze the white vote, in every area of the country but the South the Democrats do no worse than 40%. This includes the Rockies and Great Lakes. When you look at the South, it’s 20%.
If it’s solely being driven by her numbers in the South… I’m not saying that this is a bad or meaningless thing, since it can give us the shot in the arm we need for 2016-2020 WV/TN/GA along with giving us a real chance of flipping or re-flipping North Carolina, Texas, and Georgia. However, it does raise some concern about the Democratic Party’s ability to retake the House in 2016.
The economy after four years of Obama wasn’t that great and even though most of the problem was due to GOP obstructionism and bad choices in Europe, that fact worked against O and in favor of R. I’m sure that there was an element of racism, but there were quite a few other factors, HRC won’t be quite as popular with casual voters in 2020 either.
The Hillary/Jeb! matchup supports your perception. Doubt that the white female voter demographic has more than a passing impression of Walker, Rubio, and Jeb! But they are familiar with the Bush name and even after GWB, it’s not a killer with white women.
TPTB are likely comfortable enough with Clinton that they don’t see much need to offer a GOP challenger any stronger than Dole, McCain, or Romney.
It supports something related, but different.
It supports the idea that white women can perceive a difference between Jeb and his more radical counterparts.
It does not, however, explain Hillary doing about 20 percentage points better against Jeb that Obama did against Romney.
You’d really have to measure Clinton v Romney, not Clinton v Bush to come to conclusions about Clinton vis a vis Obama.
Where are you getting that 20% better among white women voters for Hillary v. Jeb compared to Obama v. Romney? The above graph displays the Hillary v. Jeb contest within four or fewer percentage points and both under 50%. While not broken down by a combination of race and gender, from the race and gender numbers we can see that it’s not possible that 59% of white women voted for Romney, and 59% is still only at most 10% better than the Hillary v. Jeb poll.
40% of white women are Republicans? These statistics showing how many lunatic republicans there are always amaze me.
What did women do when they got the vote? Followed the lead of their husbands or fathers.
That cracked a bit in 1960 when men slightly favored JFK and women slightly favored Nixon. The women’s movement ’60-70s opened up a gender gap by 1984. Is the gap wider in general elections when there’s a woman candidate? Don’t know that we have any good data on that. In the 2010 and 2014 CA gubernatorial elections, Whitman fared only 0.9% better than Kashkari did, but both of them were political novices. (In the 2008 and 2012 general elections, Obama did a point or two better than Brown did in 2010 and 2014, but McCain and Romney garnered three percentage points less than Whitman and Kashkari.)
Clinton does have inherent vulnerabilities, but those in the GOP clown car, so far, won’t be able to exploit them by enough to win.
Really? All the talk at the time was about how the youthful handsome JFK appealed more to women than Nixon with his five O’clock shadow. Many republican columnists railed against stupid women voting because of the candidate’s sex appeal.
Don’t know what was said in real time, but here are the numbers.
52% of men voted for JFK and 51% of women voted for Nixon.
As the GOP in Presidential elections has consistently run stronger among the college educated, it’s fascinating that as a political party that they are so hostile towards higher education. (How can it be that so-called “liberal” colleges produce so many Republicans?)
From the chart:
White women voters:
Romney 56% Obama 42% -14
Clinton 49% Bush 46% +3
So, I stand corrected, 17% isn’t “nearly 20%” but it’s close enough.
Oh, 17% stronger within one, and large, demographic. OTOH, Obama was exceptionally strong among several other demographics.
In October 2011 Republicans could have said that a GOP candidate was running 15% stronger than McCain did in 2008. By election day 2012, Mr. Generic GOP only added 1.5% of the vote to McCain’s percentage and McCain had the most ridiculous and scary running mate ever.
Yes, your OTOH is half the point of this piece.
It doesn’t matter when compared to a 17% bump in white women who make up, what? Thirty-five percent of the electorate?
If a Democratic candidate carries white women the election is over and wasn’t even close. Romney won them by 14% and still got clocked.
Imagine the numbers facing all the candidates except Jeb!
That’s LBJ territory, potentially.
You mean the talking heads and newspaper columnists were full of shit? I’m shocked! Shocked!
You do remember that those that heard the Kennedy/Nixon debate on radio rated Nixon more favorably, right?
That assessment was likely skewed by JFK’s accent and not the responses.
I listened to the 1984 Reagan and Mondale debate, and it seemed difficult to me not to recognize that Reagan didn’t have all his marbles. Yet, my response to the audio seemed to be a minority position.
Not a statistically significant number surveyed iirc (to the extent any actual radio survey is ever cited).
And in addition to the peculiar JFK accent Marie notes, as against Nixon’s deeper, confident-sounding Middle America voice, back in 1960 a number of upper-class radio-only types might have been over surveyed (the ones eschewing that vulgar new contraption,the television set).
No, I never heard that. Don’t know about radio. All we ever heard on the radio was rock and roll. With the treble set way up like kids today set the bass way up.
JFK actually gained a lot of women who’d voted for the Repubs (Ike) in the 50s in statistically significantly greater numbers than the men. Surveys prior to that also showed women in 1936 favoring FDR less than the men, and in 1928 favoring Hoover at greater rates than the men.
The elections of 1964 and 68 saw a shift to women generally favoring the Dem candidates.
Gender voting historically cite
Much the same with African-American voters.
As much as it pains me to admit, as 56% of white women voted for Romney in 2012, changes in the demographics of race/ethnicity and marital status appear to have been more robust factors than the 2nd wave of feminism.
As a feminist writer back in the early 1970s noted, the difference between a welfare mother and Pat Nixon is one man.
The Republican Party started peddling fear. Maybe women are more susceptible to fear. I hesitate to say this but testosterone does protect (not the right word) from fear. This is why teenage boys do crazy things without fear. The aggression leaves no room for fear. When high on testosterone (yes, you can get a high) a young male doesn’t really feel invulnerable, he just doesn’t give a damn.
Please don’t take that as chauvinism. I’m well aware of fearless women.
So why do white men vote Republican even more than white women? 62% of white men voted Republican.
The short answer is Affirmative Action.
Yeah, I’m sure that’s why…
I’m not saying this is right, but white working men feel that Affirmative Action puts them behind the eight ball when looking for a job, that black men and all women will come before them, that they are at the end of the job line because of Democrats. This is not racism despite what so many say, most Northern white men welcomed Equal Opportunity, but don’t want to be at the back of the bus. That’s how they feel and it’s been carefully stoked by talk radio. Because of this feeling they are receptive to Republican claims that they offer self-reliance and jobs based on merit (Bullshit, I know, it’s all about birth with them).
Again, it doesn’t matter that this is untrue. In elections truth doesn’t matter. It’s what the voters think that matters, whether it’s true or not.
Exactly where and when were these white men with such intense feelings of being unfairly denied the jobs that should have gone to them but for AA? That women and black men were allowed to cut into the job lines?
When I was young, military vets were put at the head of the line for entry level government jobs and many private employers also followed that practiced, at least for white men. Later on when AA kicked in and was implemented in the government sector, Black men and women were appropriately given more consideration.
I never had a chance to land one of those jobs because my timing for an equal shot was off. That’s life.
In the private sector, I did benefit from AA. However, not a single qualified, white guy wasn’t not hired because I was. Hiring me only resulted in the company hiring one less, unqualified white male trainee that year. (The trainee success/retention rate in that then exclusively male industry was incredibly low. So low that those who performed at the bottom of the barrel were allowed to hang onto their jobs until they retired.)
To be consistent with your hypothesis, your “short answer” suggests that AA produced increased levels of testosterone in women. Not sure if that’s more ludicrous than your ludicrous hypothesis that testosterone inoculates men from fear.
See my response to seabe above re Affirmative Action. Apparently, the short answer was too short. Regarding testosterone and fear, I am assuming that you have been female all your life. I have been male all my life. I have been a teenage boy. I remember my feelings. I remember the guys I ran around with. I assure you that when testosterone is high, fear goes out the window. Now that I am an old man and admittedly the levels are lower, I fear a lot of things that I laughed at back then. Fifteen years ago, I started taking the herbal “Kava Kava” for energy. It breaks down to testosterone. After two weeks, I started reacting strongly to every woman I met. One day while I was walking down the street to go to lunch, I noticed that I was swaggering. I did indeed have energy but i was thinking thoughts like,”I’m not looking for trouble, but by God if it comes my way, I’m going to end it.” And I was eager for someone to start trouble. When I realized the changes that had come over me, I stopped taking it and soon stopped thinking like a 15 year old boy and resumed thinking like a 55 year old man.
People like to think that they are rational and they are when it comes to working a math problem. But in everyday life we are slaves to the chemical stew in our blood streams. Can’t say for women. Never been a woman. I apologize for any hint that women are cowards. I feared that might happen when I penned the first post. You (women) are different from us. Your reactions to threats are different. I think hormones are large part of it.
you are taking your experience as normative. this is something that some grps of ppl tend to do, others do not, but whatever, it’s not scientific, it’s just anecdotal extrapolated
All the while the biggest benefactors of Affirmative Action??
WHITE WOMEN.
PERIOD.
I think you are right. However, I was explaining the perceptions of the people that I worked with. I did not say that I believed it.
But with your “I think you are right,” you’ve declared that you do believe the falsehood.
No I don’t. I was agreeing that white women have been the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action. The sad truth is that white managers would rather have a white woman in the office than a black man. Was that a sarcastic remark? If so, who do you think has benefited the most (maybe lawyers) or do you think no one has benefited? This is not a confrontation. I want to know your views. You are a white woman from California, right? Quite a bit different from me and I really am interested in your views even though you are not interested in mine. My mind is ope, even if you think it’s closed.
Corporations.
Well, they always win. Personally, I think half the resentment is due to lying managers telling a white guy who didn’t get a promotion, “I really wanted you but Affirmative action made me give the promotion to the black guy (or the woman)(or the Mexican guy)”, instead of standing up and explaining why the guy didn’t get the job and what he should do to improve himself.” A variation is saying the woman is banging someone in the board room and they made me do it. I’ve had a lot of bosses and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of those I respected. I could still do that even if I were missing some fingers. One was deaf-mute woman. You wouldn’t believe the vicious mockery people made of her.
You’re getting a big closer to the reality with ” half the resentment is due to lying managers telling a white guy who didn’t get a promotion,” Would change that to “didn’t get hired or promoted.”
Overall, increasing workplace diversity has improved the aggregate level of workplace competency. And at lower cost because women and minorities still mostly accept a lower salary. Childless single women are a much better employer bargain than the guys with “stay at home” wives and a bunch of kids.
I’m not without some empathy for the white men who experienced what seemed like a sudden rule change (it was sudden — it actually rolled out of many years) and instead of only having to compete with 40% of the population for jobs and promotions now had to compete with a 100% of the population. They weren’t being cheated out of anything — they just weren’t born earlier enough, like their fathers and older brothers, to have the privilege to cheat women and minorities.
So, what did that do with their loss of entitlement/privilege? Aligned themselves with the corporate, anti-union, low-wage capitalists. Allowed themselves to become such a dependable voting bloc, that Reagan could bust a union, factories could move south and then offshore, benefits could be cut and wages not raised, etc. And these very stupid men, kept railing against the “feminazis,” the Black and Latinos, the commies, etc. Wouldn’t listen to lefties and feminists that weren’t their enemy.
wrt bosses — guess I was lucky as I’d say half of them have been good. And found a way to get along with most of the other half for the required period of time.
Yes, very very stupid men.
Oh, I got along with the other bosses. I just didn’t respect them.
Facts: (Your bigotry is unattractive.)
Public employees at the local and state level 2011: women 59.5% (up from 56.2% in 1989) and African-American 12.8% (down from 15.1% in 1997).
US population:
Male: 49.2%
Female: 50.8%
White: 63.7%
Black: 12.2%
Interesting numbers, but seemingly irrelevant.
We all have our personal pet hypothesis about humans to explain social data — mostly they’re not only wrong but contradicted by the cited data.
Among every race/ethnic group in 2012, there was a gender gap. If the GOP was selling fear and testosterone makes men less vulnerable to fearmongering than women, then women in every race/ethnic group should have favored Romney more than their menfolk did. Except the actual results were just the opposite. So, either
Have to reject #1 because the GOP and Romney never shut up about the scary/black/muslim/socialist/facist in league with terrorists.
Might be something to #2. Would go a ways to explaining why men are so quick to overreact in situations that aren’t all that threatening.
I think you are saying that white women broke unnaturally high for Romney but non-white women broke unnaturally high for Obama. Duh! Race was in the equation as well.
Yes, she’s a WHITE WOMAN. Haven’t you noticed? If not, she will remind you she’s a woman. It’s the only thing we know for sure about her. That she’s white, you can see for yourself. Of course it’s absolutely not done that she draw attention to that herself.
We’ll have to compare after the election to know for sure. What was Obamas ‘s standing with the demo in 2008? Did his support go down as it neared election day and got hit with attack adds?
While the comparrison is the best you can do right now with limited information, it’s still apples to apple seeds.
He’s comparing apples to oranges per my previous comment.
More specifically he’s comparing an apple to orange preference to a pear to grapefruit preference. And concluding that women prefer pears to apples.
All indications are that Mitt is running. So where are the HRC to Romney polls? That’s what you compare to the Obama-Romney election. If you use those Clinton-Bush polls then you have to compare them with Obama-Bush polls (bet Obama would come in higher than he did v Romney) or Obama-Walker polls.
Particularly the Clinton-walker poll. Except for Wisconsinites and political junkies, nobody knows who Walker is. Hell, I’ll bet a significant fraction of Illinois voters don’t know who Bruce Rauner is!
I have seen no indications of a third strike for mittens. Just that he wants to be a kingmaker type.
There has been a speculation on blogs and among the talking heads. With sixteen (or is more now?) announced candidates, who knows. O’Malley and Jeb both played cutesy for a long time. I think O’Malley even denied being a candidate.
What percentage of the so-called “minority vote” did Obama get? You at least need that number included to justify your conclusion.
Ok, you can believe this if you want to.
The gender gap for the past elections has been caused by Non-White women.
But, if you want Hillary to hang her hopes on White women, go right ahead.
Ask Wendy Davis how that worked out for her.
Are you saying that non-white women prefer Republicans? or that non-white men prefer Republicans? Either statement astounds me.
In my experience, Republicans are only preferred by white men, evangelical white women, and West Asians.
Who are West Asians? I have roots from a country in Asia but it’s only slightly more informative to refer to someone as a West Asian rather than Asian.
Indians and Pakistanis were the people I was referring to. I believe Iranians are also counted in West Asia, but I only know one Iranian, so I can’t generalize.
I do notice a tendency for East Asians, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, to be Democratic. Indians and Pakistanis tend more toward the Republican Party. Maybe because they are more entrepreneurial so they like the free market rhetoric.
Pearl River Delta, anyone? I mean, it says ‘Communism’ on the tin, but as for what’s inside?
I think you mean South Asian
Once again — a “gender gap” exists when the votes of men and women for a candidate or party differ. In US Presidential elections there’s a gender gap among all voters and within each of the racial demographics.
In 2012 gender gap among the total electorate was approximately 10%. Among white voters, it was 6%. Among AA voters it was 9% (meaning 9% more AA women voted for Obama than AA men that voted for him). The largest gender gap was among Latinos at 11%.
The only race/ethnicity demographic that Romney carried was white folks and he was decimated in all the other groups. But that’s a race/ethnicity gap which is different from the gender gap. Within each of those groups, the votes of men and women are more similar than they are intra-groups.
A history of polling 18 months out:
Kennedy 57
Nixon 35
March 67
Johnson 47
Nixon 47
March 71
Nixon 43
Muskie 39
March 79
Carter 52
Reagan 38
Feb 83
Mondale 47
Reagan 41
Feb 95
Dole 51
Clinton 45
March 99
Bush 56
Gore 41
We know very little about November 2016. Certainly one poll with very small subgroups doesn’t strike me as convincing.
Tell me what GDP growth is over the next year, and whether there is a terrorist attack of significance and I could do a decent job estimating.
But polls this far out are based on very vague perceptions. Even the perception of Hillary will change dramatically over the next year.
National polls this far out are mostly bullshit.
All polls cited are by Gallup and presented in the following article from Pew.
http://www.pewresearch.org/2007/02/14/how-reliable-are-the-early-presidential-polls/
Terry McAuliffe didn’t fall for this…
and now, he’s Governor of Virginia.
I’ll say it again…
If Hillary’s depending upon White Women to provide her gender gap…
Then the Democrats are in trouble.
I think the implication isn’t that she’s relying on them to win. I think he’s saying that if Secretary Clinton wins white women she could go from just winning to blowing out the GOP candidate which could flip Congress too.
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