CLINTON’S GENDER GAP GROWS
Democrat has opened a huge advantage among women voters – and much of it is because of a deep distaste for Donald Trump, polling shows
The woman’s card? Hillary Clinton is playing it — and Donald Trump is helping her.
As the Democratic National Convention prepares to make history by nominating a woman for president, women in national polls give Clinton the highest level of female support of any candidate in more than four decades and the widest gender gap ever recorded. Clinton’s lead of a yawning 24 percentage points in the latest Pew Research Center Poll — not only among Democratic partisans but also from women who typically vote Republican — is an electoral challenge for the GOP that imperils Trump’s ability to win the White House.
In interviews with women across the country by the USA TODAY Network, some supporters are elated by the prospect of shattering what Clinton has called “the final, hardest glass ceiling,” electing the first female president.
“It’s about time,” says Stephanie Parra, 31, a Phoenix education consultant.
Other women are driven less by support for Clinton than by antipathy to Trump. That’s particularly true among Millennials, voters 35 and younger who were part of the Obama coalition but haven’t warmed to Clinton, at least not yet. Though seven in 10 younger women support Clinton, they say by more than 2- to- 1 that their choice is more a vote against him than for her.
Lauren Rolwing, 32, an illustrator from Nashville, still sports her Bernie Sanders button though she concedes he’s not going to be the nominee.
“At this time, I’m not going to take anything off the table other than voting for Trump,” she says.
Alarm over Trump’s provocative policies and rhetoric is costing him among some white women who typically vote Republican. White women without a college degree have backed GOP nomi- nees by double digits in the past three presidential elections, but in the Pew survey, they back Trump over Clinton by just 3 percentage points, 48%- 45%.
Clinton’s supporters in this demographic group say they will vote against him rather than for her ( 28%- 17%). Even most of Trump’s supporters indicate they are choosing the lesser of two evils: They are more likely to say they will vote against Clinton than for him ( 27%- 19%).
The Pew poll of 1,655 registered voters, taken June 15- 26, has a margin of error of +/- 2.4 percentage points.
Of course, some female voters support Trump enthusiastically. “Trump is our only hope to gain our country back,” Teresa Willis, 60, a massage therapist from Mason, Ohio, said in an interview at a Trump rally in Sharonville.
Trump trailed Clinton among women in the Pew poll by 35%- 59%. He led among men by 6 points, 49%- 43%. If that held to Election Day, the 16- point difference in Clinton’s support among women and men would swamp the record 11- point gender gap set in 1996.
“Sixteen points? That’s gigantic,” says Susan Carroll, a professor at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Some Americans aren’t comfortable with the idea of electing the first female president. In the latest USA TODAY/ Suffolk University Poll, only a third of women said they felt excitement about the prospect of Clinton’s groundbreaking election. In fact, a bit more said they felt unease. More than one in four said it didn’t make any difference to them.
Clinton, 68, wins support from nine of 10 African- American women and from nearly eight in 10 Latinas in the Pew poll. By generation, her widest margin of support is among Millennials, but her most positive support comes from women in her own generation, the Baby Boomers. College- educated white women typically lean Democratic, but Clinton leads among them by a stunning margin of 31 points, 62%- 31%.