Trump's entire 2020 election strategy rests on firing up his base and turning those voters out in droves. But what if a voting bloc he won handily in 2016 is showing serious signs of Trump fatigue, regret, and even revulsion? That is exactly the case among non-college educated white women.
As journalist Ronald Brownstein notes, every quality data source showed Trump winning non-college educated white women by more than 20 points. Pew, for instance, had Trump winning the bloc by 23 points, 56% to 33% for Clinton. The 2016 exit polls showed Trump winning white non-college women by 27 points, 61% to 34%.
This week's Quinnipiac poll, however, showed Trump underwater with non-college white women by 6 points, according to Brownstein. In fact, Brownstein first noted the trend in July when he wrote about a series of focus groups conducted by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg in small towns and rural communities. Greenberg said that while white working-class men were mostly sticking by Trump, white working-class women had been turned off by Trump's divisive racial and ideological message.
“The white working-class men look like they are approaching the 2016 margins for Trump, but not the women,” Greenberg told Brownstein. “Clearly the women are in a different place.” For instance, the report notes that these women often said Trump's rhetoric sounded “racist” or “ignorant," even though many do believe there's a crisis at the border.
Following a July poll from Quinnipiac, The Washington Post's Greg Sargent reached out to the polling outfit for some cross tabs on a question about the likelihood of voters casting a ballot for Trump. The poll found that a plurality of white non-college educated women said they would "definitely not vote" for Trump, at 47%, compared to 43% saying the definitely would vote for him, leaving Trump -3 points underwater with the demographic. Their male counterparts were much more bullish on Trump, with 48% vowing to vote for Trump while 34% pledged not to.
That trend continued in this week's Q poll, with both Biden and Sanders winning the demographic against Trump while Elizabeth Warren trails them narrowly, according to Brownstein.
That's a far cry from winning white non-college educated women by 20-plus points in 2016.
