from London, United Kingdom
A key phenomenon in US politics today is the movement of a significant number of women from every demographic into the Democratic Party (Hais & Winograd, 2020a). This article argues that such gender realignment will play a crucial role in the results of the 2020 US presidential elections, as well as in US politics for the years to come.
The history of the gender gap in US politics
On one hand, it is important to remark that American partisanship has been characterized since the Reagan presidency by a gender gap, with women leaning towards the Democratic party and men towards the GOP (Gallup, 2018; Hais & Winograd, 2020b). On the other hand, it is important to stress that 2020 is characterized by a gender chasm “so wide no Republican presidential candidate will be able to cross it for years to come” (Hais & Winograd, 2020b). In this regard, experts and research groups such as The Brookings Institution have argued that the US is currently witnessing the biggest change in party affiliation since the movement of the ‘solid South’ -made up of loyal Democratic voters- to the Republican Party in the mid 1960s (ibid., 2020a).
As shown in Figure 1, the gender gap in party identification has been widening since 1994 until today, with the Democratic Party currently having a wide advantage with women, 56% of whom identified as Democrats or leaned towards the Democratic Party in 2018/19 (Pew Research Center, 2020a).
Figure 1 (Pew Research Center, 2020a)
The gender gap between Trump and Clinton in 2016 was the largest in election polling history, as women (54%) were 13 percentage points more likely than men (41%) to have voted for Clinton (Pew Research Centre, 2018).
Such a wide gender gap has characterized the whole of Trump’s first term in the Oval Office. This is evident when looking at Trump’s approval ratings from his first year as President, with a 12% percentage point gender gap (Gallup, 2018). This gender chasm is unprecedented and roughly double the size of gender differences for former presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 (Gallup, 2018)
The gender gap, Trump and the 2020 US elections
The gender gap continues to widen, as Trump’s approval ratings in 2019 have a gender gap of 19 percentage point, with only 38% of women approving of his job, compared to 57% of men (Beckwith, 2020). This will play a crucial role in the upcoming US presidential elections between Trump and Biden, as Trump will need women’s support in order to secure a second term in the White House.
In this regard, it is also worth stressing that voters’ turnout for US presidential elections has been higher among women than men since 1984, making women an even more vital demographic for candidates to win over (Pew Research Centre, 2020a).
However, support for Trump is increasingly eroding among women, as recent pools have showed that more than half of US women (56%) support Biden, with a gender gap of 14 percentage points (Burns & Martin, 2020).
While Trump performed very well among white women in 2016 -and especially white suburban women-, he is currently losing support from this constituency due to the mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak and the surge in racial tensions. The coronavirus pandemic and its effects on the economy hit women harder than men, as the burden of caring for children and elderly family members generally fell on women, as well as household duties (Green, 2020a). Women are also more likely than men to work as nurses and elder-care aides, i.e. some of the professional roles most affected by the pandemic, with more women than men having lost their jobs in the recession (ibid., 2020a). Moreover, women blame Trump for the chaos and uptick in racial tensions. Trump’s law-and-order messaging is “falling flat on its face”, according to GOP consultant Maureen Shaver (Bade et al., 2020).
What are the reasons behind the gender realignment?
While the change in political party demographics is the “culmination of a long-term movement in party identification and voting behaviour among women” (Hais & Winograd, 2020b) that goes well beyond Trump, this article argues that the results of the 2016 presidential elections have spurred a chain reaction of women’s mobilization and activism against misogyny, sexism and male privilege permeating US society and politics (ibid., 2020b). In turn, this has brought women further away from Trump-led GOP.
The defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 was a major disappointment for liberals and feminists around the country, who questioned if America would ever be ready for a woman president. In addition, many women became furious at Trump as a tape emerged in October 2016 of him talking about women in obscene terms: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pu**y”.
Great examples of women’s mobilization include the revolutionary #MeToo movement and the 2016 Women’s March, which became the largest single-day protest in the history of the US. Other Women’s Marches were held in 2018, 2019 and 2020 against Trump’s sexist behavior and policies, including restrictions to abortion. Recently, another key event was the speech held by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the House floor, where she denounced a sexist and misogynistic culture of accepting violent language against women, after her colleague Rep. Yoho called her a “f***ing b**ch”.
US women are demanding a seat at the table
Crucially, US women are increasingly demanding a seat at the table when it comes to the political leadership of their country. As America marked its 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the US Constitution granting women the right to vote, there are currently 105 women in the House.
Indeed, there was an “unprecedented jump” in the number of Democratic women candidates for the House running as primary challengers in the period from 2018 to 2020, which is unmatched in the past thirty years (Center for American Women and Politics, 2020). Nancy Pelosi -the highest-ranking female elected official in US history and the only woman to ever serve as Speaker of the House- proudly recognized this accomplishment over her DNC speech.
The Republican National Convention
Both parties know the importance of appealing to women voters and this is why they decided to put women at the center of the Republican National Convention (RNC) and the Democratic National Convention (DNC) held in the month of August. Indeed, Conventions are “as much about a party’s anxieties as they are about that party’s vision for America”, so that the most emphasized themes often reveal what the parties themselves see as their main vulnerabilities (Green, 2020b). The two Conventions contained references and homages to the history of the Suffragettes movement and the pivotal role played by women in supporting the economy and the country.
In particular, the RNC contained many direct addresses to women, as First Lady Melania Trump addressed her message to “the mothers of the country”, while Trump female collaborators such as Kellyanne Conway painted the picture of a feminist president, who has elevated women to senior roles.
It is important to mention that the RNC presented a limited version of feminism, focused only on balancing motherhood and careers, and championing hard work rather than asking for -what they referred to as- ‘special privileges’ based on gender, as well as on giving pro-life speeches and harsh abortion talks (Green, 2020b; Goldmacher & Nagourney, 2020). Moreover, the RNC focused on empathy, in an orchestrated attempt of humanizing and sanitizing Trump’s record as a misogynistic president trailed by allegations of sexual assault (Haltiwanger, 2020).
Kamala Harris and the Democratic National Convention
The nomination of Kamala Harris as Biden’s VP can also fuel the movement of women towards the Democratic Party. The slogan presented during the DNC was that for Biden and Harris ‘when women succeed, America succeeds’. Harris’ nomination as VP is an historic milestone for the US as a country, especially during a time of deep racial tensions. Senator Harris is the daughter of immigrants and a person of South Asian descent. She is the first woman of color and the third female major party VP nominee after Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Sarah Palin in 2008.
During her DNC speech, Harris recognized the importance of women of color in their historic efforts to secure women’s rights to vote and to make democracy available for all Americans today, while they were still prohibited from voting for long after the 19th amendment. Therefore, the message of the Democratic Party with the nomination of Kamala Harris as Biden’s VP is that 2020 is the time for not just white women but all women to finally demand their seat at the table. “Even though at the top of the Democratic ticket there is a white man, 2020 will be a women’s election” (Green, 2020c).
Conclusion
The current gender realignment of women to the Democratic Party is the most profound change in US politics in the years to come, starting from the upcoming 2020 US elections. Women’s mobilization and activism already helped flip the House from red to blue in 2018 (Green, 2020a), with 58% of women supporting Democratic candidates and a gender gap of 18 percentage points (Pew Research Centre, 2020b).
The most significant impact of the gender realignment of women to the Democratic Party this year may well be not the presidential election of Joe Biden, but rather the establishment of a Democratic majority in the US Senate (Hais & Winograd , 2020a). Morley Winograd, Senior Fellow at the University of Southern California, compares the current situation with the image of a tsunami off the shore that you see coming but you cannot predict its full force until it actually happens (Groppe, 2020). We will have to wait until November in order to fully know what the effects of the gender realignment will be, but these are for sure exciting times of change towards gender equality within US politics.
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Autore dell’articolo*: Laura Mariani, studentessa MSc International Relations Theory presso LSE e laureata BA (Hons) presso School of Politics and International Relations of the University of Kent. Esperta di gender in politica internazionale del Think Tank.
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