[Just noticed this diary has made the Community Spotlight. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Be kind to yourselves today. Go Joe and Kamala!]
I just want to take a minute here on the eve of a historic election to express my gratitude to the women of this nation — especially women of color of course - who are on the cusp of saving our democracy. Again.
I say again because we’ve seen this movie before. Just 2 years ago in fact:
538
Women were one of the driving forces that helped propel Democrats to victory in the House on Tuesday [2018]. According to national exit poll data, 59 percent of women voted for Democrats and 40 percent voted for Republicans, which adds up to a record margin of 19 percentage points — nearly double the margin by which they voted for Democrats in 2016.
And when we compare how women voted to how men voted — or the gender gap — we find a record-breaking 23-point difference, which is the highest it’s been since at least 1992.
[Reminder: 2018 was a historic wave election. We won. It happened. It was real. I was there.]
We can debate about why this fact remains largely unreported and ignored by the wall of pundits and election analysts, but when I say saving our democracy I mean exactly that. Look at today’s USC Dornsife chart:
Women are a whopping +21pts in favor of Biden. Men are… zero.
We fixate on college and non-college education but it’s not that simple. For example here in Washington State. Non-College educated women support Biden 61-33. Men are Trump 49-44.
And no my fellow smarty pants college edumacated bros, strong ‘College educated’ numbers for Biden aren’t because of us. Women are the primary reason for the huge gap. In the same poll, Biden wins CE Men 57-36 which is great. But Women, 74-23. Wow.
Or take this astute analysis from the wonderful Harry Enten (one of the few data dudes who has reported at length on this):
CNN
An average of the last five live interview polls puts Biden up by 25 points among women voters...No candidate of either party in the polling era has ever led among women voters by more than 24 points in
the final pre-election polls.
The fact that women are moving to the left as men stay mostly stable means that we have an expanding gender gap. The nearly 30-point gender gap right now would be a record for any presidential election in the polling era.
There’s that word again: A record. Wow.
Call me crazy but seems to be if you were looking at a demographic that was showing unprecedented numbers in an election you’d want to spend some time informing the electorate, highlighting your narrative to reflect this historic event, or at least crank out puff pieces on what it means to be a ‘Biden Woman’ (yes, cringe, sorry).
But that hasn’t happened. In fact it seems like literally every other demographic breakdown is obsessed over. We are still obsessed with Trump voters in diners, white non-college men. Sometimes black dude ho-teps and rappers. Pieces on women voters are usually relegated to Trump supporters or the fear-laden ‘secret Biden-supporting wife’ which of course empowers the male figure.
I could go on, but look — when we talk about Seniors, we are also talking about women. When we talk about people of color, we are also talking about women. When we are talking about College educated voters, we are talking about women.
Black, brown, white, purple, burnt sienna. However you choose to identify yourself or don’t identify yourself, I just want to say to those women who have voted or will vote tomorrow. THANK YOU.
*And it’d be nice if we diversified the election analysis demographic a bit, don’t you think?
UPDATE: from today —
AND
Wow.