College Educated White Women Are Abandoning the GOP in Battleground States

There is one demographic that largely understands who is to blame for our current malaise, and my fellow millennial men, it is not us. Frankly, we aren’t a whole lot better than the older generations we rage against for poisoning our politics. Earlier this year, Pew published a staggering chart demonstrating how millennial women have largely abandoned the Republican Party.

Now, a new Washington Post/Schar poll adds to this encouraging trend amongst the superior gender, as white college educated women favor Democrats by a whopping 27 points in 69 battleground House districts. This is a big, big deal considering that 54% of white women voted for Donald Trump. Per WaPo:

The survey of 2,672 likely voters by The Post and the Schar School at George Mason University shows that likely voters in these districts favor Democrats by a slight margin: 50 percent prefer the Democratic nominee and 46 percent prefer the Republican. By way of comparison, in 2016 these same districts favored Republican candidates over Democratic ones by 15 percentage points, 56 percent to 41 percent.

Women are driving Democratic support in the battleground districts, favoring the party’s candidates by 54 percent to 40 percent. Men in these districts favor Republicans by 51 percent to 46 percent. That gender difference continues a pattern that has been seen throughout the year in other polls and in special elections.

Of the 69 districts included in the survey, 63 are held by Republicans and just six are held by Democrats. Trump carried 48 of these districts and Hillary Clinton won the other 21. In the districts won by Trump, likely voters are split 48 percent for the Democratic candidate and 47 percent for the Republican. In the districts won by Clinton, Democrats enjoy a clear advantage, 53 percent to 43 percent.

Democrats need a net gain of 23 seats to take the House. The good news is that FiveThirtyEight’s model projects that outcome to happen 73.6% of the time. The bad news? That was roughly the same odds they gave Trump of losing to Hillary Clinton in 2016. There is no excuse for not voting this November, especially if you belong to the only group of voters that understand who really is ruining American politics right now. Women, I know that the world already asks far too much of you, but there are simply way too many of my male cohorts still willing to vote for a party laser-focused on ginning up white supremacist votes in order to enact a hyper-corporatist agenda that’s hostile to women’s rights. We need you to show up to vote in droves on November 6th—particularly millennial women. The future of the republic depends on it.

Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.