I’ll start with a story. About ten years ago, the public school in my town was trying to pass a school levy. I had worked on a prior school levy and a library levy, so I knew that the general approach for education tax levies is “stealth” – college educated people vote FOR education levies so if you can quietly make them aware of the vote without getting too loud and thus activating the anti tax voters, you’re golden. My town is about 25% college educated, but that’s enough for a low turnout election and had been enough to fund our public school system and library - then came the Tea Party and the anti education GOP lurch to the Right. Our levies started failing.
So that’s where we were – our college educated people had come out and voted but they were swamped by non college Tea Party people and the school levy failed. Our local Democratic group talked about it and decided we would focus on younger non college women on the east side of town- the lower income side. We thought non college women would vote for the schools their children attend. We canvassed that side and those households, over four weekends, making a special effort to talk to women. There’s only 7000 people in this town so it was not difficult. The 2nd levy passed with higher east side turnout. I’ve been thinking about non college white women and whether that could be a growth area for liberals ever since.
I think all political junkies know that while more white women voted for Harris than did white men, it is also true that a majority of white women voted for Trump. The gender difference is there for every group – Black, Latino, Jewish, Catholic, etc. but since 95% of Black women and 60% of Hispanic women already vote for Democrats and a majority of white women voted for Trump we’ll focus on white women.
Due to differences in available data, greater disaggregation is possible among white voters than voters in other racial/ethnic groups. This data reveals a growing education gap among white women voters, as well as persistent differences by religion.
In 2024, college-educated white women further cemented their shift to Democratic support since the 2016 presidential election. This group backed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by seven points, according to Edison’s 2016 exit poll. In 2020, Biden expanded that margin of support among college-educated white women to nine points. This year, Harris’ margin of victory among college-educated white women was 17 points.
What if we made specific appeals to non college white women? Could we bump them up enough to win the total womens vote? What about in our current predicament, where we’re not 100% sure there will be a next election and are instead perhaps looking at organizing some mass resistance to fascism? Is this a group that includes possible allies?
