A story that is only interesting in bizarroworld, apparently
by digby
The news media is once again obsessing on the Real Americans out there that are voting for Donald Trump as if they’re the big story in this election. They’re white. They’re male. They’re angry. Let’s spend the next few years figuring out what’s going on with them and work are very hardest to make sure we soothe all their ruffled feelings because they are the most important creatures on earth. The New York Times:
Of course they’ll “adjust their coverage” to cover these people more. They always do.
Meanwhile this couldn’t be more boring:
We could be looking at the largest gender gap in a presidential election since at least 1952: Men are favoring the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in typical numbers, but a historically overwhelming share of women say they will vote for the Democrat, Hillary Clinton.
As my colleague Nate Silver has pointed out, women are winning this election for Clinton. Between the historic nature of Clinton’s candidacy, Trump’s record of misogynistic comments and now the Trump tape and allegations of sexual assault against Trump, American men and women are incredibly split on the 2016 election. But that split isn’t symmetrical. In an average of the most recent live-interview polls from each pollster to test the race in October, Clinton holds a 20-percentage-point advantage among women, and Trump is winning more narrowly among men.
The only Democrat ever to win women by more than 20 points was Lyndon Johnson in 1964 — also in a blowout. Four years ago, President Obama carried women by only about 12 points. Even when he first won the White House, in 2008, by about double his 2012 margin, his margin among women was only 14 points.
And yet, Trump is still carrying men. If the live-interview polls are on the mark, the difference between how men and women vote — the gender gap — in 2016 would be historic. Dating back to 1952, there has never been a 26-percentage-point gender gap.
To put this year’s gender split into a little more context: Trump’s 7-percentage-point lead among men is about how well George W. Bush did with men in 2000. If we had an average gender gap this year, we’d expect Clinton to carry women by between 5 and 10 points (given how men say they are going to vote). That kind of gap would result in a close race overall, which is exactly what the state of the economy suggests should be occurring.
Instead, Clinton is leading by about 6 or 7 percentage points nationally in the FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecast. Basically, the vote among men looks “normal”; the split among women does not. That is, the historically large gender gap this election is because women are disproportionately favoring one candidate (Clinton) — to an extent we wouldn’t expect them to in a normal election given the “fundamentals.”
It’s possible the gender gap on Election Day will turn out smaller than indicated by current live-interview polls. Nonlive polls, for instance, such as those conducted online or via automated voice technology, have found a smaller gender gap. That could be because online polls and robo-polls tend to require heavier weighting — the raw samples reached by these polls often aren’t as representative. Live-interview polls tend to be more accurate, on average, which is why they are studied here, but the nonlive polls could be closer to the mark this year.
He wonders whether the woman’s vote is more pro-Clinton or anti-Trump. That’s very hard to sort out. But it’s striking that nobody thinks it’s even possible that women might be genuinely approve of Clinton and think it’s important that a woman becomes president knowing very well that the social forces that have held women back from leadership are the same ones that produced a misogynist cretin to oppose her.
Maybe if she wins, the media might find that story as interesting as the one about the angry white men they’ve been chasing for 40 years.
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