Donald Trump began pressing a line of attack this week that’s deadly for his candidacy—that the ladies won’t vote for Hillary Clinton ‘cuz she’s playing the “woman card.” Brilliant, Trump, take it straight to your opponent among a voting bloc you absolutely need but already pretty much despises you. Who knows, maybe they don’t feel “cherished” by The Donald—at least, 70 percent of them don’t per Gallup’s daily tracking poll (that “unfavorable” view is up from 12 points since last July.)
It’s not just that he’s losing single women, who vote disproportionately Democratic as a rule, it’s that he’s tanking with the segments that are essential to a Republican candidacy: both married and white women. Tierney Sneed reports:
Married women
Married women, who turned out for Mitt Romney over Obama by 53 percent to 46 percent, have an overwhelmingly negative view of Trump. Seventy percent of them view Trump unfavorably, according to Purple Slice online poll conducted by Purple Strategies for Bloomberg Politics and released earlier this month. Married women choose Clinton over Trump 48 percent to 36 percent. (The married female vote would be split 43-to-43 percent if Clinton was facing Cruz, according to the poll.)
“There’s a 21-point gap between where [Trump] is and where he needs to be just to match Romney, who lost,” Douglas Usher, a pollster for Purple Strategies, told TPM.
A Democracy Corps poll this month put Trump in slightly better stead with the married contingent—narrowly beating Clinton by 3 percentage points. But Clinton crushed him with unmarried women, 73 percent to 21 percent.
“Married women are supporting Trump by a slight margin and unmarried women are giving Hillary Clinton a 52-point advantage. That’s huge,” said Page Gardner, president of the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund.
White women
Despite a record-setting gender gap overall [in 2012], Romney was still able to win among white women, 56 percent to Obama 42 percent. (Obama meanwhile won 96 percent of black women and 76 of Hispanic women).
According to a Washington Post poll from this month, 66 percent of white women view Trump unfavorably, and 55 percent of them very unfavorably. (emphasis added)
Trump even loses young women worse than crotchety ol’ John McCain
In a generic match-up, young women support a Democrat over a Republican by a 33-point margin, according to a Harvard Institute of Politics poll of 18- to 29-year-old likely voters released this week. But once young voters are asked to chose between Trump and Clinton, the spread among young women increases to 42 points. […]
“He’s well behind even where [2008 GOP nominee John] McCain was among younger voters and younger women in particular,” Usher said, referring to the Harvard Institute of Politics Poll.