While the chance of a woman winning the Democratic presidential nomination for 2020 aren’t too high at this very moment, female voters seem keen on kicking Trump to the curb.
Biden has held a 60% to 36% lead over Trump among women in an average of our last two (October and December) CNN/SSRS polls. The same polling put Trump up 52% to 42% among men voters. When you combine Biden’s 24-point lead among women and Trump’s 10 point lead among men, this makes for a 34-point gender gap.
But what’s causing an escalation in the gender gap from even 2016 and 2018? It’s women turning even more against Trump than they were previously.
Back in 2016, women voted for Clinton by 14 points. Therefore, the Democratic margin among women has grown 10 points from 14 points to 24 points in recent polling. You’d have to go all the way back to the blowout election of 1964 to find an election in which women voted Democratic by a larger margin.
Interestingly, the Republican margin among men is basically unchanged from 11 points in 2016 to 10 points in CNN’s most recent polling.
One group that does seem to have shifted, at least in our polling, is white women without a college degree. In our last two polls, Trump has only led among them by an average of 4 points over Biden. In 2016, he won them by 23 points. That’s a shift of 19 points.
Meanwhile, white men without a college degree continue to overwhelmingly back Trump. He beat Clinton by 50 points among them and is up 43 points over Biden in the average of our last two polls among them. (In our last poll, Trump’s margin was 47 points.)
Put this together, the gender gap among whites without a college degree is up from 27 points to 39 points now.
This could be a big story in the Midwest battleground states. White women without a college degree make up closer to 30% of voters in the Midwest states decided by 8 points or less in 2016 (i.e. the battleground states). They’re closer to 20% of voters in non-battleground states nationwide.
If Trump is going to win in 2020, he’ll need to either shrink his deficit among women or expand it among men. Knowing Trump loves a base first strategy, it wouldn’t be surprising if he chooses the latter and the gender gap ends up even larger than being polled right now.
Source : Nbcnewyork